Listening to how plants talk, scream and cry
At 1 p.m. last Thursday, nearly 300 researchers and business leaders gathered in the auditorium of the Blue Cube at Valencia's City of Innovation.
A video was shown during a presentation called Listening to Plants. The presentation was part of the 3rd Biotechnology Conference, organized by the Institute of Plant Cellular and Molecular Biology (IBMCP), a joint center of the CSIC and UPV, together with the Biovegen Science-Business platform and the Fundación Grupo Cajamar.
The video featured the "voice" of a plant, ultrasonic sounds that are inaudible to humans but can be detected using specialized microphones.
These sounds may be distress signals. As the plant experienced increasing water stress, the ultrasonic emissions became more frequent. At the same time, time-lapse footage showed its leaves and stems gradually wilting.
The scientific audience was visibly struck, even unsettled, by the impact of the audio. The discovery that stressed plants, not only from drought but also from insect or fungal attack, react and emit sounds was first documented in 2023 by Tel Aviv University in Israel.
It is the IBMCP, however, that has since built the world's largest plant sound atlas, recording images and ultrasounds from crops including tobacco, tomato, pepper, and cucumber. The archive now holds more than 30,000 hours of recordings, 450,000 ultrasonic records, and an equivalent number of metadata entries covering variety, genotype, plant age, temperature, air and soil humidity, soil pH, CO₂, and more. This data is processed using artificial intelligence (AI). That is the added value of the subsequent research generated: it will make it possible to program precise, automated irrigation to save resources and optimize yields, or, conversely, to broadcast ultrasounds in the field to repel moths and combat serious tomato pests such as Tuta absoluta, reducing the need for crop protection products.
As Javier Brumós, the researcher leading the PUA (Plant Ultrasound Atlas) project, explained, "selecting the least 'talkative' plants" will help identify "individuals more tolerant of drought" and locate the genes responsible, making it possible to "edit" their genome. Brumós's work was just one example of the biotechnology revolution approaching in the EU, one that will largely be driven by the new regulation on new genomic techniques (NGTs), which is expected to be ratified by the European Parliament in June or July but will not come into force until 2028, once the implementing rules have been developed. This picture should also include the reform, likewise inspired by the openness and flexibility that the new regulation will bring, of EU rules on genetically modified microorganisms (GMMs).
This was set out at the conference by Ana Judith Martín de la Fuente, Secretary of the Interministerial Council on Genetically Modified Organisms at the Ministry of Agriculture, who indicated that adapting the regulatory framework "to the specificities of GMMs" and opening an accelerated procedure for some of these microorganisms could pave the way for a new generation of biofertilizers, biostimulants, to improve soil fertility, and biopesticides, to combat pests without chemicals. These would be bacteria, yeasts, microscopic fungi, and microalgae, genetically edited to perform a specific function, such as producing a molecule, breaking down a residue, or being used as additives, flavors, or ingredients in new foods.
Unlike plant improvement through editing techniques such as CRISPR, this field remains largely uncharted in Europe. Despite the technology being available, the EU has yet to receive a single application to register a GMM event. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has already ruled out risks to the food chain, which would justify a shift, in line with regulations already in force across the rest of the developed world, toward legislation more flexible than the current framework governing transgenic organisms, and "based on the resulting product."
Technology transfer experts, including Biovegen President José María Fontán; Carlos Baixauli, Director of the Fundación Grupo Cajamar's Experimentation Center in Paiporta; Oriol Alcoba of ESADE; and Purificación Lisón, Professor in the Department of Biotechnology at the UPV and a member of EFSA's GMO Network Subgroup on NGTs, all agreed in highlighting the "geopolitical" shift the EU is undergoing in its approach to promoting agricultural biotechnology. Several noted that it is being treated "on a par with AI, semiconductor development, quantum computing, and defense policy." Particular attention was paid to the contribution of Emilio Rodríguez Cerezo, of the Active Senior Program at the European Commission's Joint Research Center, who noted that "the push for biotechnology from the EU, backed by regulation and funding, will be even greater in human medicine than in agriculture."
The IBMCP at the center of the NGT revolution
As the potential of the projects presented made clear, many of which have already resulted in patents and have given rise to three thriving spin-offs (Madeinplant for crop improvement via CRISPR; Naplatec for nutraceutical, cosmetic, pharmaceutical, and agri-food applications; and Zimotopía for producing "enzybiotics" to replace biocides and combat bacteria such as listeria in food), Valencia's IBMCP is exceptionally well placed to lead this revolution. As its director, Pablo Vera, confirmed, the institute has just been recognized as a Severo Ochoa Center of Excellence, the highest accreditation awarded by the Spanish State Research Agency, which will attract new projects and funding. Its figures for 2023–2025 speak to its current standing and point to an even stronger future: with an average annual budget of €5.4 million, set to grow thanks to the Severo Ochoa award, and a further €8 million in generated funding, its researchers, the institute employs 273 people, have published more than 1,000 papers, completed 30 doctoral theses, and participated in 300 projects over that period. According to Laura Zacarés, the institute's Head of Technology Transfer, the returns from this research already reached €2.4 million over the three-year period, figures that are expected to grow as the new NGT era takes hold.
Improved crops and non-agricultural applications
The IBMCP is already working on edited tomatoes with improved flavor and nutritional value. In partnership with COPSEMAR, the largest rice cooperative, it is also using CRISPR to improve varieties such as Albufera and Sendra to make them resistant to the main disease affecting this cereal, Pyricularia, while also increasing yields and drought tolerance. The institute has developed "sentinel" plants engineered to activate a gene that makes them fluorescent when attacked by a virus, and is working on new systems for the in vitro regeneration of plants, producing a complete plant in the laboratory from a leaf, root, stem, or embryo, both to facilitate crop multiplication and to enable efficient delivery of genetic edits.
Projects were also presented that go beyond agriculture: geminiviruses produced in plants to turn fields into biofactories for viral vectors, viral components, or platforms for medicinal gene therapies, as well as nanoparticles "decorated" with antibodies also generated in plants, modified plant viral particles coated with molecules of biomedical interest.