2Blades2Blades discovers and advances technologies that significantly reduce, or entirely prevent, crop disease in order to improve agricultural output and the lives of people around the world.
The Unmet Need
Working to deliver solutions to crop disease
Basic food security is in danger - and under growing pressure
Today nearly 2 billion people don’t get enough food and micronutrients
In the next thirty years, there will be 2 billion more people to feed with increasing resource constraints
We have a great responsibility to continue to move science forward and to utilize it in the best ways possible to nourish mankind, especially those suffering every day.
Dr. Kenneth M. Quinn, President of the World Food Prize Foundation
Crop diseases cause significant production and quality losses – at an increasing rate
Grey represents crop loss. Up to 100% of the world’s wheat is threatened by rust diseases, 20% of citrus by citrus greening, and 80% of bananas by Panama disease
Global trade, climate change, and agricultural intensification continue to speed the spread of plant diseases.
In 2014, growers spent over $14 billion dollars on chemicals that only partially controlled crop diseases
Costs from Steve Byrne, Merrill Lynch 2015 Global agriculture inputs primer
Effective solutions are urgently needed
Crop protection chemicals can help, but they can lose efficacy and accumulate in soils and water. They are also expensive, restricting their use by poor farmers.
Disease resistant crops provide the most direct and environmentally-benign control, but effective and durable crop resistance is not available for many plant diseases.
Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.
Carl Sagan
The need for disease resistant crops is especially acute for subsistence agriculture
Crop losses erode food security and contribute to malnutrition, spiking food prices, and civil unrest
Access to safe and effective solutions is lacking
…If you desire peace, cultivate justice, but at the same time cultivate the fields to produce more bread; otherwise there will be no peace.
Norman Borlaug
2Blades contributes by developing innovations in durable disease resistance
Tomato plants with bacterial spot disease
Bacterial spot resistant tomatoes
...whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
Ensuring innovative disease resistance solutions reach the field
With its unique non-profit structure, strong foundation in the scientific community, and proven capability, 2Blades fills a vitally important role. Our programs demonstrate the impact that can be achieved by taking important discoveries and innovation in plant science, advancing these with further scientific, business, and management support, and focusing on delivery of the resulting improvements into resistant crop products for commercial and subsistence agriculture.