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Quantum Flowers & Foods (QFF)'s neutron breeding service irradiates plant and microbial samples to unlock viable mutations that can dramatically improve the resilience and shorten breeding periods. Holding three patents—two in Japan and one in the U.S., with an EU patent on the way, the company is well on its way to bring its game-changing innovation to industries worldwide. Its neutron beams are produced in a particle accelerator and possess high linear energy transfer (LET) that can efficiently cut through double-stranded DNA without reducing the survivability of organisms. QFF’s neutron breeding uses the focused stream of fast neutrons to induce mutation with a frequency of over 15 to 300 higher than conventional technologies. Another salient feature is that unlike other radiation methods, which fail irradiation of microorganisms underwater, its technology-driven offering enables the process in liquid culture. The service is also highly accessible as it does not have user pre-requisites like having years of research experience. At the same time, the technology is regulation-free, which expands the horizons of its applicability to many sectors such as alternative foods, pharmaceuticals, biomass energy generation and more. “Our technology can breed any biological organism as long as it fits within the neutron accelerator, which provides us endless market potential,” says Norio Kikuchi, founder, CEO and CTO. The complete development flow is organized into four stages. At stage zero, QFF establishes an irradiation plan customized to the specific traits of microorganisms and plants chosen by clients. The next stage involves irradiating the samples within the neutron accelerator at specialized facilities to induce large-scale mutants. After the transformation, it conducts a thorough screening process where organisms with desirable traits are filtered. When working with microbial samples, the following step is total breed development, where QFF collaborates with the client to reproduce the mutated microbial variants. Its ground-breaking ability to penetrate through aqueous cultures enables significant yield improvement in bacterial microbes. Clients can also use neutron breeding to develop organisms that are more resilient to toxins and undesirable environmental factors, unlocking never-before-seen scalability in industrial processes where chemical and temperature sensitivity have been age-old barriers. In case of plants, the final phase involves raising the seedlings and testing. The strains created through neutron beaming are proven to bridge the ecological disruptions driven by climate change. For instance, QFF developed new species that are immune to diseases and high temperatures caused by high greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. To deliver similar effects using genome editing techniques would take up to 10 years; neutron breeding makes it possible in only three. Exemplifying the efficacy of QFF’s technology is a project where neutron breeding of small chrysanthemums led to the creation of plant varieties with had different flowering times, colors, petals and leaves. The variants also showcased significantly higher heat resistance. Most importantly, the company’s service could deliver these transformative outcomes in less than a year. This success is but one of the many QFF has sparked using the versatile neutron breeding service. Equally important to its achievements is the company’s partner network comprising the top-notch universities and research institutes in Japan and the U.K. These collaborators are at the heart of why QFF’s technology has a mutagenic success rate of 40 percent as opposed to other techniques, which are still stumbling at a mere 0.1 percent. Combining a high mutation probability that mitigates the number of irradiation and selection cycles, QFF is changing how organizations across the life sciences landscape approach mutagenesis.
