Speaker
Description
Programmable plant systems are plants engineered to have new capabilities to receive and transmit signals, enabling them to report on their environment, respond to external stimuli, and interact with other organisms and sensors. Programmable plant systems are enabled by a deep understanding of plant signaling, gene function, and synthetic biology that create new connections between plants, people, microbes, and the environment. Crop species provide an important context for programmable plant systems, and transition synthetic biology from model organisms to adoption in our agricultural systems. We envisage crops being incorporated into an ‘Internet of Living Things’ with programmable plant systems being integrated with above and below ground robotics, prediction methods, architected frameworks, and AI, making agriculture smarter, more efficient, and more sustainable.