Non-transgenic RNA bioprotection
Crop immunity you can spray on.
Cassava Brown Streak Disease rots tubers underground while the plant still looks healthy above it. KaaraGen delivers a programmable RNA shield that primes the crop's own defences: no genetic modification, no new seed, no ten-year breeding cycle.
- 20+ days
- Field stability per application
- Non-transgenic
- No change to plant genome
- 2 protocols
- Foliar spray or stem-cutting soak
Built in Uganda for the East African starch corridor
- Sequence design matched to local UCBSV isolates
- Advised by plant virology and RNA silencing faculty
- Built for commercial outgrower blocks, not smallholder retail
The problem
Factories are paying a pathogen tax they cannot see coming.
Cassava has moved from a subsistence crop to an industrial raw material. Regional processors depend on a predictable supply of high-starch tubers to produce commercial starch, glucose syrup and industrial flour.
Cassava Brown Streak Disease breaks that supply chain at the factory gate. An infected plant can keep green leaves and strong stalks while the virus turns the starch-rich core of the tuber into brown, woody necrosis. Nobody finds out until the weighbridge.
30–50%
Weighbridge rejection rate
Tubers arriving at processing facilities fail viscosity and colour specification on inspection.
60%
Typical factory utilisation
Unpredictable rot forces regional starch extraction plants to run well below installed capacity.
$30M
Annual regional loss
Estimated yearly economic cost of CBSD to the East African industrial cassava market.
Figures are drawn from published regional economic and industrial supply data for the starch processing corridor.
Why it works
Stop breeding for resistance. Start delivering it.
Conventional resistance breeding takes seven to ten years to produce a single variety. A factory running short of raw material this season cannot wait for that.
Programmable, not permanent
The active agent is a double-stranded RNA sequence. Retarget it against a new viral strain by changing the sequence, not by restarting a breeding programme.
Non-transgenic by design
Nothing is inserted into the plant genome. The signal is transient, which keeps the product outside GMO registration pathways in most regional frameworks.
Shielded against the field
Naked RNA degrades within hours under tropical sun and rain. Ours is anchored inside a BioClay layered-double-hydroxide matrix that releases it gradually.
The platform
Protection that sits inside the supply corridor
The sequence is programmable, the shell is mineral, and the contract sits with the processor, the party actually carrying the cost of rejected tubers. Four steps take it from a sprayer to an audited starch extraction rate.
See how it worksExplore
Go deeper
The short version is above. Each of these goes into the detail.
Supported by
Secure your supply corridor before the next harvest.
If you run a processing facility, fund early biotech, or work on cassava in East Africa, we would like to hear from you.
Request the technical brief