Cytotrait

Cytotrait is a Manchester-based agricultural biotechnology company developing novel crop traits through organelle engineering. Spun out from the University of Manchester, the company is built on intellectual property developed by Dr Anil Day and Dr Junwei Ji, and has been supported through the University of Manchester Innovation Factory, the institution's technology commercialisation arm. Cytotrait completed Northern Gritstone's NG Studios deeptech venture-building programme and previously received £498,000 from the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) for research into hybrid seed production in wheat.

Modern agriculture faces a structural challenge: feeding a growing global population while reducing the environmental impact of food production. Conventional crop engineering approaches — which modify genes in the nuclear genome — face limitations in trait expression levels, regulatory complexity, and biosafety risks associated with gene spread through pollen. These constraints slow the development of crops with genuinely improved characteristics and limit what breeders can achieve commercially.

Cytotrait's proprietary platform, the Mutant Organelle Selection System (MOSS), takes a fundamentally different approach by targeting chloroplasts and mitochondria rather than the nuclear genome. MOSS enables the rapid achievement of homoplasmy — the state in which every organelle in a cell carries the edited genome — without using selection marker genes that leave undesirable genomic footprints. This allows for high-level trait expression, simplified regulatory pathways, and reduced risk of gene spread into wild plant populations through pollen, since organelle DNA is rarely transmitted in this way.

In March 2026, Cytotrait closed a £3 million seed round led by Northern Gritstone, with participation from the UK Innovation and Science Seed Fund and the Northern Universities Ventures Fund. The funding will support new research programmes in wheat, maize, potato, and canola, targeting applications including improved yield, environmental resilience, new food traits, and enhanced carbon sequestration. The company plans to commercialise through partnerships with major seed developers, operating a combination of co-development and licensing models.