Source: Rainbow Crops news release Belgium - The Gates Foundation has awarded a $7 million grant to Rainbow Crops to support the development of crop varieties that can perform under heat and drought conditions. The funding is intended to support work on genetic approaches to improve crop performance for smallholder farmers. The grant will be used to apply Rainbow Crops' Trait Foundry platform to identify and combine genetic traits linked to crop performance during early growth stages. The project will focus on improving germination and seedling establishment under challenging climatic conditions in regions including Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The Trait Foundry platform combines genome editing, artificial intelligence, breeding, and phenotyping to work on traits controlled by multiple genes, such as drought tolerance and plant growth. The approach differs from methods that focus on single traits. The initial research will focus on corn, sorghum, and rice, which are widely ...