Israeli startup CanBreed said it has used gene editing technology to alter a gene in the cannabis plant to make the plant resistant to powdery mildew, a fungus that can be deadly for the plant.
CanBreed said that to the best of its knowledge, this is the first time a commercial company has managed to perform genome editing on a cannabis plant. The editing was done using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology.
By editing the gene, the protein is not expressed, he explained, potentially resulting in a powdery mildew-resistant plant. Now the startup has to prove that these gene-edited plants are in fact resistant to the fungus, he said, and will do so working together with scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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