Two scientists from the University of California, Davis have received a VinFuture Prize for their work in developing self-cloning crops. Venkatesan Sundaresan, Distinguished Professor of plant biology and plant sciences, and Imtiyaz Khanday, assistant professor of plant sciences, were honored at a ceremony in Hanoi, Vietnam on December 5.
The VinFuture Special Prize for Innovators with Outstanding Achievements in Emerging Fields awards $500,000 to recognize innovative research with the potential to bring positive change. The prize was established in 2021.
“I’m honored that the global impact of our research is being recognized in this way,” said Khanday. “I come from a farming family, and I’ve always wanted to develop technologies that help farmers, especially smallholder farmers. We’re trying to make better seeds for the world.”
Sundaresan and Khanday’s research addresses sustainability challenges in agriculture as climate change and population growth increase pressure on food systems. Hybrid crops can yield up to 50% more grain than their parent varieties but require farmers to purchase new seed each year due to unpredictable yields from subsequent generations. Their breakthrough enables hybrid crops to clone themselves without sexual reproduction, allowing consistent high yields across generations.
“Making crop hybrids widely available to smallholder farmers can meet food demands for the 21st century sustainably, without increasing land use or agricultural inputs,” Sundaresan said. “It will have vast impacts on millions of rice farmers and billions of people in developing countries for whom rice is the major caloric source.”
To achieve self-cloning plants, the researchers used CRISPR/Cas-9 technology to disable genes responsible for meiosis so that egg cells retain a full set of chromosomes. They then activated a gene called BBM1 which prompts embryo development without fertilization. This process mimics apomixis—a natural form of cloning seen in some plant species—so that resulting embryos are genetically identical to their parents. As these plants reproduce clonally, farmers can save seeds for future planting.
Their innovation arose from basic scientific research funded by federal grants. Sundaresan noted: “When we started out, we weren’t even working on this problem. We were just trying to understand how plants make embryos.”
Khanday identified BBM1’s role during his postdoctoral work in Sundaresan’s lab. At the same time, Raphael Mercier (Max Planck Institute), Emmanuel Guiderdoni and Delphine Mieulet (CIRAD) developed a method to prevent meiosis in rice; together they created synthetic apomixis.
The team introduced their self-cloning technique for rice in 2018 and later improved its success rate by identifying an additional gene involved in the process. They have since demonstrated similar results with maize and other researchers have applied the method to sorghum.
Both UC Davis researchers continue expanding applications: Sundaresan focuses on cereal crops like rice while Khanday works on vegetable crops such as potatoes and tomatoes.
“You can preserve any desirable genotype with this technology, whether that’s disease resistance or climate tolerance,” said Khanday. “Synthetic apomixis has the potential to impact agriculture globally, especially for smallholder farmers.”
Sundaresan and Khanday share this recognition with Mercier, Guiderdoni and Mieulet. Previous recipients of VinFuture Prizes include developers behind CAR-T cancer immunotherapy and AlphaFold as well as scientists who contributed discoveries leading to drugs like Ozempic.
“We are poised on what I hope will be a new revolution in agriculture,” said Sundaresan. “Our invention means that the benefits of hybrid crops will become available, equitable and accessible to farmers all over the world. This is hugely important for achieving sustainable food production.”
Funding supporting their work came from sources including the National Science Foundation, United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Experiment Station, Innovative Genomics Institute and France-Berkeley Fund.
