About Us

Traditional Japanese agriculture has been centered around paddy rice production, but in recent years, there has been a significant shift in agricultural policy towards more field-based cultivation in order to domestically produce more food. Rural areas are facing a shortage of labor and an exacerbation of rice surplus, making it increasingly necessary for crops to be large-scale and both labor and mechanically efficient in order to be viable. Furthermore, the depreciation of the yen, soaring prices of overseas grain, and geopolitical risks in Ukraine and Taiwan have further exacerbated the need for food security, requiring feed self-sufficiency for livestock such as cows, pigs, and chickens. As a result, there has been a strengthening movement towards the domestication of crops such as feed corn, wheat, and soybeans, which were previously heavily reliant on overseas imports.
Anticipating this change, since 2010 we have been proactively demonstrating tests for planting and harvesting grain corn, and collaborating with farmers nationwide to seek partnerships for cultivation know-how and feed companies. With the amendment of the Basic Agricultural Law in 2024, we expect a leap in the domestic production of grain corn.

Crop improvement in agricultural production has seen significant innovations. Starting with the commercialization of F1 hybrid corn seeds in the United States in 1924, followed by the proliferation of genetically modified seeds in the 2000s, and then the decoding of the human genome, crop improvement has evolved from conventional crossbreeding to genome-level technology. This culminated in the groundbreaking technology of gene editing, the CRISPR-Cas9 system, which was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2012).
In response to this change, we aimed to create new crops through genome editing and established Tsukuba University spin-off venture, Sanatech Life Science Co., Ltd., with Professor Hiroshi Ezura of University of Tsukuba's School of Life and Environmental Sciences as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in 2018. In 2021, we succeeded in commercializing the world's first gene-edited (High-GABA Tomato) using CRISPR-Cas9.