![\"Cibus](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/SUT-L-CIBUS-004.jpg\")
Cibus CEO Peter Beetham in a Cibus greenhouse filled with rice plants. (K.C. Alfred \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\nNestled in the Sorrento Mesa brush, a greenhouse is filled with genetically resilient rice.<\/p>\n
Peter Beetham, CEO of Cibus, walked through the lush grass and, in his Australian accent, recounted the first time he successfully altered plant DNA.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t believe it,\u201d he said. In the lab, he repeated his experiment dozens of times before his breakthrough \u2014 Beetham was able to hack into a tobacco\u2019s gene-editing instructions and made the plant more resistant to herbicides.<\/p>\n
When Beetham first published this technology in 1999, the field was dominated by genetically modified organisms \u2014 an approach that inserts foreign genetic material into a host\u2019s DNA. Beetham\u2019s method directs a plant\u2019s own DNA repair system to make a targeted changes that exist organically in nature.<\/p>\n
Cibus, founded in 2001 to commercialize this platform, was an early mover in what would become the precision crop biotechnology revolution.<\/p>\n
That cold night at Cornell University 28 years ago would be the impetus for his $120 million company.<\/p>\n
Cibus CEO Peter Beetham in a Cibus greenhouse filled with rice plants. (K.C. Alfred \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n
The company is called Cibus \u2014 Latin for nourishment \u2014 and it recently announced that it would begin deploying genetically engineered rice to countries in Latin America, aiming to finally profit from the science that took the San Diego team almost two decades to develop.<\/p>\n
It took a long time to bring their science to market because, while developing the technology, the novel method had no comparison. Cibus scientists were changing genetic building blocks, and the outcome was indistinguishable from what exists in nature.<\/p>\n
Unlike CRISPR \u2014 which deletes sections of DNA and often causes cascading effects \u2014 Cibus\u2019s proprietary rapid trait development system, or RTDS, takes advantage of a naturally occurring genetic reaction in the body to change DNA to correspond to a more favorable trait.<\/p>\n
It works like this:<\/p>\n
Your DNA breaks thousands of times a day, then fixes itself in accordance with its cellular instructions. This San Diego company is hacking those DNA directions in plants \u2014 genetically engineering crops to carry more favorable traits.<\/p>\n
And as that cell grows from a seedling to a stalk, it will carry more resilient DNA.<\/p>\n
Cibus has edited canola and rice DNA to be herbicide-tolerant and disease-resistant.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you plant a crop, you spray a lot of herbicide to control weeds,\u201d said Beetham. \u201cEveryone does. So people often say, \u2018Not all farmers buy herbicides.\u2019 Well, even organic farming uses a different type of herbicides.\u201d<\/p>\n
He listed several long words that end in \u201cicide,\u201d which farmers use to dose plants, hoping for a healthy harvest.<\/p>\n
Using Cibus seeds, farmers could save money and\u00a0use fewer chemicals while growing healthier crops, said Beetham.<\/p>\n
The science inside the San Diego greenhouse is impressive \u2014 but it took a lot of money to get there.<\/p>\n
![\"Daniel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/SUT-L-CIBUS-007.jpg\")
Daniel Belcher, a senior research associate at Cibus, works a greenhouse with rice plants that may soon be grown in Latin America. (K.C. Alfred \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n
As of the end of 2025, Cibus carried a deficit of $858 million \u2014 the compounded cost of more than a decade of foundational research with no major commercial product on the market.<\/p>\n
\u201cCibus has incurred significant losses and anticipates that it will continue to incur significant losses for several years,\u201d the company said in SEC filings.<\/p>\n
This financial turmoil is the status quo for many R&D companies, but Cibus is particularly short on money and time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf ongoing or future field trials are unsuccessful, Cibus may be unable to complete the development of productivity trait candidates on a timely basis or at all,\u201d the filings note.<\/p>\n
There have been significant steps taken to reduce losses. Net losses dropped 53% from 2024 to 2025, in large part because the company reduced R&D expenses.<\/p>\n
In December,\u00a0Cibus warned investors about its debts in SEC filings, noting that if the company doesn\u2019t raise more money in the next few months, it might not survive.<\/p>\n
The following month, Cibus raised $22.3 million. This funding would \u201cextend its runway to roughly mid-2027,\u201d Beetham said.<\/p>\n
To buy time, Cibus has made an unexpected detour into fragrances.<\/p>\n
Using the same gene-editing platform it applies to rice and canola, the company has engineered yeast strains that produce rose and peach scent compounds for \u201ca major consumer goods partner,\u201d though he didn\u2019t say which one.<\/p>\n
Cibus expects to generate real revenue starting in the second half of this year through this venture.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Adina](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/SUT-L-CIBUS-002.jpg\")
Adina Grossman, a cell biologist at Cibus, checks for gene modifications on rice shoots that were edited in a growth room. (K.C. Alfred \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
While the company is rolling out fragrances, it will continue working to deploy genetically modified crops to the field.<\/p>\n
Herbicide-tolerant rice varieties are slated to launch with seed company partners in Colombia and Ecuador around 2027, with Peru and broader regional expansion to follow.<\/p>\n
The company is still awaiting regulatory approval in the U.S. and Canada.<\/p>\n
Cibus will begin making money when farmers start saving money using Cibus seeds.<\/p>\n
In theory, Beetham explains, farmers will save money on herbicide. That saving gets split roughly three ways among Cibus, the seed company and the farmer, and Cibus collects $20 to $30 per acre in royalties.<\/p>\n
At scale, it\u2019s a compelling model. Getting to scale is the hard part.<\/p>\n
There are countless things that need to go right in field testing, and even if you account for them all, the unpredictable occurs.<\/p>\n
During one costly Canadian field trial, a farmer thought he\u2019d found a clever workaround for watering the crops: banking snowmelt to sustain his crops through the season. It worked exactly as planned, right up until the geese showed up. Drawn to the newly formed pond, they ate every last one of the genetically engineered plants before Cibus could run the required tests.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the downside of one of our best intentions,\u201d said Noel Sauer, senior vice president of research at Cibus.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Rice](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/SUT-L-CIBUS-001.jpg\")
Rice shoots that were edited start as a single cell, then scientists monitor if the alteration sticks into adulthood. (K.C. Alfred \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n
The royalty model only pays out once edited seeds are in farmers\u2019 hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a hesitancy among farmers and in agriculture. It\u2019s the \u2018show me\u2019 industry. Show me it works. I want to see it in my field. I want to see that it controls the weeds,\u201d Beetham said. \u201cThat\u2019s great, because we know this product works.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cibus scientists test their engineered traits across generations of seeds, guaranteeing that they carry more resilient characteristics that will save farmers money down the line.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe science will outlive me,\u201d Beetham said. \u201cI feel like a chaperone. And that\u2019s why I am making sure we do the highest quality deployment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nestled in the Sorrento Mesa brush, a greenhouse is filled with genetically resilient rice. Peter Beetham, CEO of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[19093,387,181,74,76,75,1696],"class_list":["post-329484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-biotech","tag-business","tag-latest-headlines","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}