NGS Super spotlight - Inari Agriculture
24 Mar 2022 5 min readWelcome to the NGS Super Spotlight series where we, the NGS Super Investments team, bring you interesting and topical information relating to our investment portfolio.
To kick off the series, we are putting the spotlight on our recent investment in Inari Agriculture.
Who is Inari?
Inari is a private company that is working to transform the global food system by gene editing seeds. Inari’s SEEDesign™ platform uses predictive design and advanced multiplex editing to match the diversity and complexity of nature itself. This unsurpassed technology offers the promise of better seeds at a lower cost and in less time than existing approaches.
Inari has been working on its SEEDesign™ platform for corn and soy crops and set the following goals:
| Productivity goals | Water usage | Climate change goals |
|---|---|---|
| Up to +20% yield in corn and soy |
-40% water needed for corn |
-40% nitrogen needed for corn |
| Compared to historical improvements of ~1% per year | Equivalent to approximately 2.1 years of US total water consumption from domestic and public supply | Equalling a reduction of half a metric ton of CO2 per acre of corn |
The latest
Inari has announced a strategic collaboration with InterGrain, a leading cereal breeding company in Australia, to dramatically improve the yield potential of wheat. This enhances a crop’s long-term viability in the face of an increasingly variable climate. Inari and InterGrain hope that this partnership will result in a 10-15% increase in wheat potential and more efficient use of standard inputs such as water, pesticides and fertiliser.
What does this mean?
This collaboration makes a significant contribution to many of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Inari’s focus on being part of the solution to the challenges facing the global food system — from food scarcity to climate change — addresses several of the issues relating to sustainable development, as you can see below.
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| Higher and more resilient crop yields mean less food scarcity | Promoting work and economic growth in research, science, farming and the food supply chain |
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| Promoting sustainable industrialisation and fostering innovation | Reducing inequalities surrounding the affordability of and access to food |
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| Making our communities resilient and sustainable | Promoting sustainable production of food |
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| Making big agriculture more efficient and sustainable reduces CO2 emissions |
Investment options
The following NGS Super investment options have an exposure to Inari:
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