Top 6+ American Companies Engineering Plants to Withstand Climate Change

The Rise of Smart Plant Communication Systems

InnerPlant is revolutionizing agriculture by engineering crops to communicate within hours when stressed by pathogens, drought, or nutrient deficiencies. When those plants are in the earliest stages of stress, they produce fluorescent proteins that aren't visible to the naked eye but can be imaged by special cameras on satellites. Depending on the color in which they fluoresce, it's possible to tell if the plants are beginning to suffer from lack of water, the presence of pathogens, or a nutrient deficiency. Think of it like your car's dashboard warning lights, but for plants. This signal provides as much as four weeks of warning before symptoms of stress are visible to other scouting methods. Farmers will be able to access this data via an online portal, then take the appropriate action. This company is giving Mother Nature a megaphone, and farmers are finally learning to listen.

John Deere's Billion-Dollar Bet on Plant Intelligence

John Deere recently led a US$16 million funding round for InnerPlant, which gave it a seat at the InnerPlant board. This isn't just a small investment — it's a clear signal that one of agriculture's biggest players believes the future lies in smart crops. John Deere's Operation Center could alert a grower that satellite images have detected plant signals that indicate spider mites are beginning to show up around the edges of a soybean field. The Operation Center could help a producer decide the kind and volume of material needed to address the infestation and organize a machine to apply it. The tech that they're bringing to fruition is unique signals to specific stresses at a higher resolution, earlier than typically detected. Imagine precision farming so precise it can target individual plants in distress while leaving healthy ones untouched.

The Fluorescent Tomato Revolution

InnerPlant has already produced a fluorescing tomato plant – named the InnerTomato – which is currently being tested in fields in California. The firm is also working on a soya plant, and it plans to develop other crops in collaboration with industry partners. Depending on the regulatory hurdles to be crossed, the regular version of the InnerTomato may be available to farmers within a year. A recent investment by Japan's MS&AD Ventures should certainly help that to happen. The soya plant could hit the market a year after that. InnerPlant has already created tomatoes and soybeans that emit different fluorescent proteins for different stressors. The fluorescent protein emitting soybean has yet to be grown in field conditions, however the tomatoes the company developed are being grown and studied in California fields. These aren't your grandmother's garden tomatoes — they're more like biological smartphones that text farmers when trouble's brewing.

CropVoice: When Plants Finally Get Their Say

CropVoice™ is InnerPlant's groundbreaking insights platform that combines data from a network of sentinel plots featuring InnerSoy™ – a first-of-its-kind soybean engineered to signal when it's stressed. Data is analyzed using advanced predictive models to provide the earliest, most definitive detection of fungal infection and deliver the highest ROI crop protection strategies. CropVoice is the product we're offering to retailers and farmers starting in 2025 that's powered by our InnerSoy fungal sensor. Subscribers will receive spray recommendations in response to fungal pressure in a particular coverage area based on signals from our InnerSoy plant together with other data points such as temperature and relative humidity. It's like having a plant whisperer on speed dial, available 24/7. Their soy fungal sensor is USDA-approved and they're currently working toward voluntary FDA approval.

CRISPR-Powered Drought Warriors

Researchers are developing strains of rice, maize and wheat capable of withstanding longer droughts and wetter monsoon seasons. Extreme temperatures are exposing crops to new fungi and pests, which is motivating scientists to genetically engineer disease-resistant cassava, potatoes and cacao. Researchers have used CRISPR/Cas9 to insert a promoter at a specific maize locus to increase drought tolerance. Specifically, an alternate maize promoter was inserted before ARGOS8, a gene associated with drought tolerance. This precise insertion enabled greater grain yield during flowering water stress, while maintaining yields in normal growth conditions. Research is also under way using CRISPR-based gene editing to improve drought tolerance in wheat, cassava, papaya, sugarcane and cotton. These crops are basically being trained to survive in conditions that would make a desert cactus sweat.

Disease-Fighting Super Crops

Climate change can increase the severity and likelihood of plant diseases. A majority of diseases affecting plants and animals are anticipated to become more widespread with climate change. To counter the looming surges, scientists have been working on conferring disease resistance in livestock and food crops without the use of pesticides and fungicides. In crops and livestock, genes have been identified that increase disease resistance when knocked out. Altering genetic elements involved in susceptibility has thus far been the primary form of disease mitigation through gene editing for crops. Successful gene editing studies in crops and animals provide a reasonable foundation for further use of this technology to address a range of diseases. Plant diseases threaten food security and are expected to increase because of climate change. CRISPR genome-editing technology opens new opportunities to engineer disease resistance traits. With precise genome engineering and transgene-free applications, CRISPR is expected to resolve the major challenges to crop improvement.

Enhanced Photosynthesis: Plants That Eat CO2 for Breakfast

Researchers at the Innovative Genomics Institute have received funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to use CRISPR gene-editing technology to improve the ability of plants and soil microbes to capture and store carbon from the atmosphere. The National Science Foundation-funded Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency project found that by using genetic engineering to optimize photosynthesis. Roots can be engineered to be sturdier, larger and deeper. By using a molecule found in avocado and cantaloupe skins, these engineered roots can better resist decomposition, minimizing carbon escape. Up to 20% of the beneficial molecules that plants create during photosynthesis is shared through their roots with microbes living in soil. Using genetic engineering, researchers could adjust the communication and interplay between roots and microbial communities, helping to stabilize carbon in the soil. These plants aren't just surviving climate change — they're actively fighting it, one carbon molecule at a time.

Stanford's Revolutionary Genetic Circuits

Stanford's Brophy is developing new genetic engineering techniques that can help plants grow in a variety of different conditions. By changing the genome of both commercial crops and soil bacteria, she thinks it may be possible to help plants survive droughts by retaining more water during a dry spell, or growing deeper roots to reach soil that hasn't dried out yet. Brophy notes that engineering crops in the future may not just involve modifying plants – it may also involve genetically modifying soil bacteria. Instead of farmers spraying chemical signals on their crops to instigate a response, it may be possible to alter microbes that exist nearby, and program them to be tiny plant helpers. As the bacteria's surroundings change, they could potentially send out chemical signals that tell nearby plants to shift their growth accordingly. Genetic circuits could allow those changes to happen on demand, rather than needing to breed them into crops gradually over generations. For farmers, that new ability would come in especially handy as weather becomes more volatile and unpredictable.

Climate Tech Giants Leading the Green Revolution

TIME once again partnered with Statista to rank the 250 top sustainability focused companies in the U.S. The analysis considered the positive impact, financial strength, and innovation of organizations that are developing products, services, or technologies to stop or reverse the impact of human activities on the planet. Top ranked BETA Technologies is seeking to reinvent flight with its fleet of battery-powered planes. Founded in Detroit in 2013, GreenLancer is built on the vision that accelerating renewable energy adoption will create meaningful, lasting change for our planet and communities. The company's mission is to make solar and EV charger design, engineering, and field service management simple for clean energy contractors. GreenLancer is making critical solar services more accessible. America's top greentech companies are seeking to reinvent industry, forcing us to consider better, cheaper, and ultimately more sustainable alternatives to traditional approaches.

The European Resistance and Regulatory Reality

The European public has refused to blindly accept genetically modified food from the moment the technology was developed, largely due to concerns about corporate control, health and the environment. Biotech firms have been trying to sell genetically modified crops to Europeans for decades. But most European citizens remain convinced that crops made with both old and new genetic techniques should be tested and labelled. In 2018, the European Court ruled that plants made with new genetic techniques have to be regulated like any other genetically modified organism. Biotech firms and their allies within biotech research centres have since set out to convince the European Commission of the need for an entirely new legislation. The first step was to rebrand the techniques they are using, aiming to distance themselves from the bad reputation of genetic modification. This resistance shows that public acceptance remains a major hurdle, even as the technology advances rapidly.

The Corporate Race for Climate-Resilient Patents

Companies like Corteva and Bayer are leading the race to secure patents on new genetic techniques and their products. Typical examples include patents for soybeans with increased protein content, waxy corn, or rice that is tolerant to herbicides. These crops are designed for an agricultural model centred on the large-scale cultivation of single crop varieties destined for the global market. Biotech firms seem to have succeeded in convincing the European Commission that we need new genetically modified crops to tackle climate change. They argue that by enhancing crops' resistance to drought or improving their ability to capture carbon, climate change may no longer seem such a daunting challenge. The question remains whether these corporate-driven solutions will truly serve farmers and the planet, or just shareholders.

The Mushroom Solution: Novobiom's Fungi Power

Soil contamination can be a pain to deal with, but Novobiom's solution is simple: mushrooms. The company claims these can break down the most stubborn of soil pollutants through mycoremediation. It's applying the same principle to textiles and waste, using fungi to recycle them into biogas or other reusable substances. Novobiom is already working with L'Oréal under its Green Science Incubation program and plans to use a recent cash infusion to further develop its process and open a pilot plant. Sometimes the most powerful solutions come from the smallest organisms. This approach shows that engineering climate resilience isn't just about high-tech genetics — sometimes it's about partnering with nature's own cleanup crew.

Water From Thin Air: Majik Water's Climate Response

For the last few years, East Africa has been plagued by an intense drought courtesy of climate change; half of Kenya's population lacks access to clean water. This is what Majik Water hopes to change. This environmental company builds devices that capture water from the humidity in the air and aims to make them accessible to as many communities that need it. The machines come in three sizes – capable of capturing 25, 120, and 500 liters a day. With 30 deployments so far, Majik's systems are currently providing 1,900 people with 200,000 liters of water. While not directly engineering plants, this company demonstrates how American innovation is tackling climate challenges from every angle, creating the infrastructure that climate-resilient agriculture will need to thrive.

The Agricultural Revolution's Biggest Promise

Genetically modified crops can help reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to possible decreases in production emissions, GM yield gains also mitigate land-use change and related emissions. Wider adoption of already-existing GM crops in Europe could result in a reduction equivalent to 7.5% of the total agricultural GHG emissions of Europe. GM crops tolerant to stressors such as drought and heat will improve effective yields through reduced crop damage. Even larger yield increases might come from GM traits that improve yield potential through enhanced plant growth and photosynthetic efficiency. New gene-editing technologies will likely further increase the diversity of desirable crop trait combinations. Larger yield increases in more crops would lead to larger GHG emission reductions. The math is simple: better crops equal a better planet.

Early Warning Systems That Could Save Agriculture

We overfertilize by 30-50%, which impacts biodiversity and kills the soil's ability to sequester carbon. 50% of pesticides are misapplied. Up to 40% of agricultural yield is lost to pestilence. Plants can be engineered to emit signals when they need fertilizers for growth and pesticides to combat pestilence. The ability to turn plants into living sensors is a triple win that combats climate change, preserves biodiversity, and has the potential to increase agricultural yields by up to 40%. The plants know best, they've been doing this for millions of years. So if we can harness that plant level data and deliver it to farmers in an effective way, this is the future of farming. This technology could eliminate agricultural guesswork forever.

The Climate Crisis Timeline

Climate change is altering our environment, subjecting multiple agroecosystems worldwide to an increased frequency and intensity of abiotic stress conditions such as heat, drought, flooding, salinity, cold and/or their potential combinations. These stresses impact plant growth, yield and survival, causing losses of billions of dollars to agricultural productivity, and in extreme cases they lead to famine, migration and even wars. Global climate change will continue to broadly reduce crop and livestock yields. Some landscapes will experience yield improvements, but largely climate change stands to lower productivity. Coupled with population increases, these coinciding phenomena will necessitate the expansion of agricultural lands into currently non-cultivated geographical areas. The clock is ticking, and these companies are racing against time itself.

The Future Harvest

Agricultural land covers over one-third of global land surface. Using just a fraction of this space to more efficiently capture and store carbon through engineered crops would be instrumental in countries meeting their net-zero targets. Climate change is my main motivator. I think we need every available tool trained on this problem to ensure that we can support a growing population as the environment that we live in becomes more challenging. And hopefully, if we can make plants more robust, we'll be able to continue growing them effectively in the future. How to utilize these tools should be informed by the latest science but also directed by communities. Determining what carbon capture tools to use and how to use them should not be left solely to scientists and policymakers, but people who are impacted by both climate change and its proposed solutions. Listening to the stewards of ecosystems will ensure that genetically-engineered crops meet the needs of the environment, local populations, and the wider global community.