BioLumic has partnered with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) to test the company’s light-based technology for activating seed traits in direct-seeded rice systems as the technology company works to complete a round of funding to support commercialization.
Founded in 2013, the New Zealand-based company, which has offices in the U.S., developed an ultraviolet-based approach to activating seed traits through its xTraits platform. The platform compiles photobiological, genomic, phenotypic data from different sources and then develops a light signal recipe, allowing the company to turn on or off existing genes in the plant, without the need for CRISPR or chemical processes, AgNavigator reported previously.
BioLumic and IRRI will work on a 15-month pilot program in the Philippines during the 2026 wet season and the 2026/27 dry season to validate light-activated rice seed traits that could reduce water use and methane emissions in direct-seeded systems, paving the way for future commercial seed projects in India and across South Asia.
IRRI operates a direct-seeded rice breeding program for South and Southeast Asia, and six IRRI-bred direct-seeded rice varieties will be used in the pilot.
The IRRI partnership will build on BioLumic’s previous work on developing rice traits, which was supported by $2.1 million in grant funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Previously, BioLumic demonstrated repeatable gains in seedling growth and establishment across 11 rice varieties, including in both standard and direct-seeded rice-adapted lines.
Direct-seeded rice involves sowing seeds directly into the field rather than transplanting seedlings into flooded paddies, Jason Wargent, chief science officer and founder of BioLumic, told AgNavigator. Wargent will be sharing more about the partnership during a side panel at the Norman E. Borlaug International Dialogue on Oct. 21, 2026.
“Direct seeded rice is seen as a game changer because it’s going to bypass those traditional resource heavy steps, and there’s all sorts of upsides for direct seeded rice because you can you can remove that that that stressful labor component. You can also you know you’re saving water because you’re not flooding fields. There’s a methane component too,” he elaborated.
The rubber hits the road in BioLumic’s commercialization journey
BioLumic is working to complete its next round of funding as the “rubber hits the road” when it comes to commercializing the technology, Wargent noted. “This will be one of the first seasons where we’ve actually had marker-assisted recipes that have started to go all the way through the inheritance cycle,” he added.
BioLumic has a partnership with Wisconsin-based contract corn seed producer Gro Alliance to treat seeds with BioLumic’s technology. Late last year, the agtech company brought the technology to South America through partnerships with GDM and Tropical Melhoramento & Genética.
When it comes to scaling the technology, BioLumic only has to rely on several xTraits devices to have a large impact, and by treating parent seeds, the resulting traits can be passed on to offspring seeds, Wargent explained.
“There’s 100 million acres of corn hybrids being grown in the U.S. alone. How do you activate physically all those bushels of seed? What we now know is that we can activate the parents, so that could be anywhere from 50 to a hundredfold reduction in the number of seeds that we physically have to touch because we’re only treating the parents,” he elaborated.
