Key Takeaways
- Novin AgriTech has received a $174,906 USDA SBIR Phase I grant covering an eight-month project to develop and introduce a nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) trait into elite wheat cultivars using its proprietary InPACT transformation platform.
- The InPACT platform is genotype-independent and tissue culture-free, enabling direct genetic manipulation of elite wheat germplasm without the limitations of conventional transformation methods, and is protected by two patents licensed from Purdue University.
- Novin AgriTech co-founder Mohsen Mohammadi is a wheat breeder and associate professor of plant breeding and genetics at Purdue University, where he leads the soft red winter wheat breeding program focused on yield, Fusarium head blight resistance, and sustainability traits.
- The company recently established a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the USDA, providing access to the USDA-Agricultural Research Service collaborative environment to advance the InPACT platform toward gene editing applications.
- Once validated for NUE in wheat, the InPACT platform is designed to extend rapidly to other traits — including abiotic stress and disease resistance — and other cereal crops including barley, oat, and sorghum.
Novin AgriTech, a startup combining agricultural expertise and biotechnology to develop novel traits for cereal crops, has been awarded an eight-month, $174,906 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I grant from the USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The funding will be used to develop a nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) trait and introduce it into elite wheat cultivars using the company's proprietary InPACT transformation platform.
Novin AgriTech's InPACT Platform: What Sets It Apart
InPACT is a genotype-independent, tissue culture-free cereal transformation platform developed by Novin AgriTech co-founder Mohsen Mohammadi, an associate professor of plant breeding and genetics in Purdue University's Department of Agronomy. Alongside InPACT, Mohammadi developed a nanoparticle-assisted ultrasound gene delivery system. Both platforms are covered by patents licensed to Novin AgriTech through the Purdue Innovates Office of Technology Commercialization. Together, they enable direct genetic manipulation of elite wheat germplasm — a capability that conventional transformation approaches have historically struggled to achieve in commercially relevant varieties.
“Our mission is to empower the cereal crop ecosystem with practical, scalable and future-ready solutions that tackle the evolving challenges of food security, health, resource efficiency, and crop resilience to biotic and abiotic stresses,” said Mohsen Mohammadi, co-founder of Novin AgriTech.
What the SBIR Project Will Deliver
Over the eight-month funded period, Novin AgriTech aims to achieve technical validation of InPACT as applied to a commercially critical trait, identify promising early-generation NUE plants, and generate data-backed evidence to support Phase II SBIR funding, strategic partnerships, and regulatory positioning in gene-editing-friendly markets including the United States.
Mohammadi described the project as transforming the technology from demonstration stage into a high-value product, with validated nitrogen efficiency gains reducing adoption risk and shortening timelines to field trials. Once validated for NUE, the same workflow is designed to extend to other complex traits such as abiotic stress tolerance and disease resistance, and to adjacent cereal crops including barley, oat, and sorghum.
“Successful delivery will demonstrate our genotype-independent, tissue culture-free transformation platform can be applied to a commercially critical trait: NUE and farm-ready cultivars. This major proof point will show the platform is fast, trait-relevant and scalable across elite wheat varieties,” Mohammadi said.
USDA CRADA and Novin AgriTech Earlier Milestones
Novin AgriTech recently established a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the USDA, providing access to the USDA-Agricultural Research Service environment to further advance InPACT toward shared objectives including gene editing techniques. The company's origins trace to a 2023 Purdue Innovates Trask Innovation Fund award of $47,773 to Mohammadi's research group, which supported the molecular data work that underpinned the InPACT technology and the subsequent launch of Novin AgriTech.
