Reimagining the future of food is a task our industry knows well. From growing practices and supply chain efficiencies to varietal development and so much more—fresh produce is at the heart of the mission to improve the quality of food and how we grow it. Enter Elo Life Systems, a company unlocking nature’s abilities to make consumers’ favorite foods more delicious, healthy, and planet-friendly while making the mission good for business as well. With the challenges seen across food production and supply, Chief Executive Officer Todd Rands joins me to discuss the value behind Elo’s vision and what the company is doing to address the hurdles of today.
A: At Elo, our mission is to reimagine the future of food. We’re all about harnessing the untapped potential of nature to make food tastier, healthier, and resilient while requiring less from the planet.
Produce crops face a variety of threats from climate change and disease. Growers are demanding better crop performance. And consumers are always looking for produce that’s not only more sustainable but tastes better and is better for them. Through Custom Cultivate, our sophisticated gene-editing platform, we’re able to improve the value of fruits and vegetables–optimizing taste, flavor, and color, enhancing their nutritional profile, and more. We can improve yield and quality while reducing breeding time. We can also secure crops for the future – making them more climate-resilient, disease resistant, and reducing the need for pesticides.
A: At Elo, we’re able to optimize crops under threat from disease and climate change, improve quality, and yield or elevate nutritional attributes and functionality.
As an example, we work with some of the largest banana suppliers in the world. Most people don’t know it, but the Cavendish banana–the world’s most popular fruit–is on the verge of extinction. A deadly fungus, known as Fusarium TR4, infects the circulatory system of Cavendish plants, rotting them from the inside out. There is no cure or treatment for the disease. It can live in the soil for decades, spreading easily via storms, irrigation, or the tread of a tire or shoe.
In 2020, Elo partnered with one of these companies to create a Fusarium TR4 resistant banana. We identified solutions using our plant genetics, machine learning, and data analytics expertise, comparing more than 50 genomes of banana varieties and other related crops to find candidate targets that could provide disease resistance. Through this process, we identified targets that protect Cavendish plants from the fungus and created resistant plants in just three years. By comparison, creating a commercially productive, resistant strain through cross-breeding could take at least a decade or two—and the Cavendish doesn’t have that long to wait.
A: Through our work, we created banana strains that fight the fungus by activating native antifungal properties found in the plant or helping the banana to recognize the presence of the fungus so its natural defenses kick in. We tested the fungus-resistant Cavendish plants in our greenhouse, exposing them to levels of the fungus higher than what’s found in infected locations in real-world growing conditions. These plants were found to be resistant in trials and are currently undergoing field testing in Latin America.
But our work doesn’t just stop with bananas. We’re also working with a large NGO to protect and improve key staple crops in sub-Saharan Africa. These crops, such as cowpea and cassava, are depended upon by hundreds of millions of people. Yet these crops are under pressure and will be needed more than ever to feed a population in the region that’s expected to double by 2050.
With a vision trained decades down the line, there is much more to this company than meets the eye. Leading with imagination, stay tuned as we continue to explore how this future-facing company turns ideas into action. 
