Gates Grant Boosts Self-Cloning Crop Tech for Indian Farmers

UC Davis professor leads project to develop high-yielding, self-cloning pearl millet and Indian mustard varieties.

Jan. 28, 2026 at 3:15am

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Venkatesan Sundaresan, a plant biologist at UC Davis, has been awarded a $4.9 million grant from the Gates Foundation to develop self-cloning crop varieties for Indian farmers. The five-year project aims to expand Sundaresan's previous work on "synthetic apomixis" in rice to create high-yielding, self-cloning versions of pearl millet and Indian mustard - two important regional crops that often get overlooked by major agricultural research.

Why it matters

This technology could significantly improve agricultural productivity and food security for smallholder farmers in India by giving them access to affordable, high-yielding hybrid crops that can self-propagate from season to season. It also represents an opportunity to direct more research attention and resources towards "orphan crops" that are regionally important but often neglected by the global agricultural industry.

The details

The project is a collaboration between researchers at UC Davis, UC Berkeley, the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, and the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research. They will work to adapt Sundaresan's synthetic apomixis method, which allows plants to clone themselves, to the specific reproductive biology of pearl millet and Indian mustard. The team also plans to develop a version of the technology that relies on gene editing rather than transgenics, which will make the self-cloning crops more easily adoptable in India's regulatory environment.

  • The $4.9 million, five-year grant from the Gates Foundation was awarded in January 2026.

The players

Venkatesan Sundaresan

A Distinguished Professor of plant biology and plant sciences at the University of California, Davis, who previously developed synthetic apomixis technology in rice.

Myeong-Je Cho

A researcher at UC Berkeley's Innovative Genomics Institute, collaborating on the project.

Viswanathan Chinnusamy

A researcher at the ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi, collaborating on the project.

Ravi Maruthachalam

A researcher at the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research in Thiruvananthapuram, collaborating on the project.

Gates Foundation

The philanthropic organization that is providing the $4.9 million grant to fund the research project.

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What they’re saying

“It's wonderful that the Gates Foundation has taken an interest in this technology. Their funding makes it possible for us to apply our method to specific crops in contexts where it can make a difference.”

— Venkatesan Sundaresan, Distinguished Professor of plant biology and plant sciences, UC Davis

“Big seed companies generally want to work on huge worldwide crops like corn, soybeans and tomatoes. The technology we develop with this grant will directly benefit smallholder farmers in developing countries.”

— Venkatesan Sundaresan, Distinguished Professor of plant biology and plant sciences, UC Davis

“It may be more complicated to move this technology into dicots, because the embryo initiation process is a little different, but I'm hoping that in five years, we'll have the technology working in Indian mustard. Our discoveries will also yield valuable information for other dicot crops.”

— Venkatesan Sundaresan, Distinguished Professor of plant biology and plant sciences, UC Davis

What’s next

The research team plans to spend the next five years expanding their synthetic apomixis technology to pearl millet and Indian mustard, as well as developing a gene-edited version that can be more easily adopted in India.

The takeaway

This project represents an important effort to direct agricultural research and innovation towards the specific needs of smallholder farmers in the developing world, rather than focusing solely on the priorities of major global agribusinesses. If successful, it could lead to a new 'agricultural revolution' by making high-yielding, self-propagating hybrid crops more accessible to the farmers who need them most.