Quadram Institute scientists are working on the first phase of a major new Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) programme to help develop the plants and food of the future.

Professor Martin Warren, chief scientific officer at the Quadram Institute, is part of an international consortium of researchers working on future foods that can be more nutritious, productive and resilient to climate change. The project is co-led by Saul Purton at University College London (UCL) and Scott C. Lenaghan, University of Tennessee, USA.

The first phase of ARIA’s £62.4 million Synthetic Plants programme aims to develop a new generation of major crops that are more productive, resilient, and sustainable. Phase one focuses on demonstrating that a functioning synthetic plant unit is possible; and understanding the social and ethical considerations around synthetic plants and what is needed to navigate them.

The Quadram Institute team’s involvement with the “Creating a Programmable, Synthetic Plastid Genome: Synplastome v2.0” project involves developing a trait for Vitamin B12 biosynthesis in the engineered potato plant. The Quadram Institute has been awarded a £645,000 grant as a co-investigator. The other trait being worked on will be for nitrogen fixation, led by Chris Voigt at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Quadram Institute chief scientific officer Professor Martin Warren said: “This programme represents a bold leap forward in plant engineering biology. By integrating vitamin B₁₂ biosynthesis into plastid genomes, we’re not just enhancing nutritional value — we’re reimagining what crops can do for human health and environmental resilience. It’s an exciting time to be at the forefront of engineering plants that can help meet global nutritional and sustainability challenges.”

Research teams in the UK, USA and Germany will be bringing their skills and knowledge to bear on highly complex synthetic biology research. Co-investigators are:

• Scott C. Lenaghan. University of Tennessee, USA
• Neal Stewart, Jr. University of Tennessee, USA
• Alison G. Smith. University of Cambridge, UK
• Anil Day. Bright Biotech Ltd, UK
• Wes Robertson. MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK
• Martin Warren. Quadram Institute, Norwich, UK
• Chris Voigt. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
• Andre Holzer. Holzer Scientific Consulting, Germany

ARIA’s Synthetic Plants programme aims to catalyse a new generation of major crops that are more productive, resilient, and sustainable.

Notes to editors

About ARIA: ARIA is an R&D funding agency created to unlock technological breakthroughs that benefit everyone. Created by an Act of Parliament and sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, we fund teams of scientists and engineers to pursue research at the edge of what is scientifically and technologically possible.

About the Quadram Institute: Based on the Norwich Research Park, UK, the Quadram Institute is a partnership between Quadram Institute Bioscience, the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, the University of East Anglia and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

The institute’s mission is to deliver healthier lives through innovation in gut health, microbiology and food and its vision is to understand how food and microbes interact to promote health and prevent disease.  Interconnected research themes deliver a pipeline of research in plants, microbes, food, and health: microbes and food safety; the gut and the microbiome; and food innovation.