Growing the Future: C-SPIRIT’s Role in Building a Sustainable Bioeconomy

By Ashley Stender | September 25, 2025

Rethinking Agriculture in a Warming World

The bioeconomy promises to harness biological resources to drive growth, resilience, and sustainability. The stakes are high, because farming today is already strained by hotter growing seasons, unpredictable rainfall, and more frequent climate shocks such as droughts and floods.

Since 1961, global agricultural productivity growth has slowed by about 21 percent, with the steepest declines in Africa at 34 percent and in Latin America and the Caribbean at 26 percent (Ortiz-Bobea et al., 2021). Food security is also worsening. In 2023, about 733 million people (roughly one in eleven worldwide and one in five in Africa) faced hunger, according to the United Nations’ State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report (UNICEF/FAO/WFP et al., 2024). Meanwhile, nearly one third of the world’s soils are degraded (FAO, n.d.), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirms that shifts in temperature and precipitation patterns are already disrupting agricultural systems (IPCC, 2021).

These overlapping challenges show why new approaches are needed. Traditional solutions, such as higher fertilizer inputs, new irrigation, or incremental breeding for desirable traits, are proving insufficient in the face of compounding stresses and environmental limits (Zandalinas et al., 2022). The bioeconomy offers another path: harnessing the potential of plants, microbes, and data to make agriculture more resilient and sustainable.

C-SPIRIT, the Center for Sustainable Plant Innovation and Resilience through International Teamwork, is designed to deliver the discoveries and applications that a resilient bioeconomy requires. We operate a six-aim research pipeline, powered by advanced computational tools and machine learning, that drives the discovery and application of plant and microbial compounds to enhance crop resilience and reduce synthetic inputs. The pipeline spans metabolite discovery, annotation and database development, gene and pathway discovery, biological synthesis, lab and field testing, and environmental and toxicity assessment. Together, these efforts connect scientific discovery to real-world agricultural needs.

Policy Momentum for a Global Bioeconomy

In response to these pressures, governments are turning to the bioeconomy to help address climate change, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity, while also reducing dependence on fossil and synthetic inputs.

  • In Europe, the bioeconomy is seen as essential for meeting sustainability targets, including climate and energy goals by 2030 and climate neutrality by 2050, while also addressing biodiversity loss and pollution (European Commission, 2018/2022).
  • In the United States, it is positioned as a way to build resilient biomass supply chains, improve sustainability, and expand market opportunities for small and mid-sized producers (USDA, 2024).
  • Internationally, success is described as depending on entire innovation ecosystems and value chains, rather than just building individual facilities (OECD, 2023).

These perspectives show how governments and international organizations view the bioeconomy as both a climate strategy and an engine for growth. C-SPIRIT fits directly into this policy arc. Our international model, spanning the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, and South Korea, connects stress-tolerant agriculture to natural-product discovery and shared data infrastructure. Together, these efforts mirror what policy-makers are counting on the bioeconomy to deliver: lower environmental footprints, stronger food systems, and new, sustainable growth.

Laying the Groundwork

Inside the lab, C-SPIRIT focuses on the research foundations that make bio-based solutions possible, especially in its first four aims: metabolite discovery (Aim 1); annotation and database development (Aim 2); gene and pathway discovery (Aim 3); and biological synthesis (Aim 4). These aims are designed to transform the complexity of plant and microbial chemistry into usable knowledge for resilience and bio-based innovation.

Discovering novel signals. C-SPIRIT member Gaurav Moghe helped develop “identification-free approaches” that allow scientists to analyze complex data without formally identifying every chemical signal detected (Yuan et al., 2025). This approach helps researchers focus on novel signals that could point toward new agricultural solutions.

Connecting chemistry to plant traits. Toshinori Kinoshita and his colleagues showed that sugar compounds act as messengers between leaf cells, helping to regulate stomatal opening and ion transport (Zait et al., 2025). Sean Robertson, Asher Pasha, Nicholas Provart, and Olivia Wilkins demonstrated how drought intensifies rice’s sensitivity to heat stress, producing unique transcriptomic and physiological responses (Robertson et al., 2025). Together, these findings highlight which pathways and traits could be targeted to help crops perform under real-world stress combinations.

Investing in infrastructure. By developing annotation systems and contributing to platforms like the Global Natural Products Social Molecular Networking project (GNPS, n.d.), our researchers create data resources that extend beyond any single experiment or lab. This combination of cutting-edge discovery and shared tools lays the groundwork for a stronger bioeconomy.

From Lab Bench to Real-World Impact

Alongside discovery and data work, C-SPIRIT is structured to move findings into farms and markets. The latter half of our research pipeline focuses on lab and field testing (Aim 5) and environmental and toxicity assessment (Aim 6), which are essential steps for translating natural products into safe and effective agricultural inputs. As candidate compounds and microbes are validated, they can become biostimulants, microbial soil amendments, or natural crop protection products that reduce reliance on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides while improving resilience.

The economic stakes are substantial. Biotechnology could contribute up to 2.7 percent of GDP in industrialized countries by 2030, according to the OECD, which underscores why translation matters (OECD, 2009). To illustrate the trajectory from trait to product, C-SPIRIT researchers have characterized a genome-edited tomato with higher fruit quality and yield, providing a concrete example of how metabolite-guided traits can advance toward market-relevant outcomes (Suzuki et al., 2025).

Translation also requires people, partners, and trust. C-SPIRIT’s Broader Impacts Team is explicitly tasked with ensuring that our discoveries move beyond the lab by working with farmers, industry, and communities on adoption pathways. Our Scientific Advisory Board helps shape research strategy, workforce development, and technology choices. Our Stakeholder Board develops a roadmap to close knowledge gaps, build trust, and support sustainable adoption. Together, these structures help align rigorous science with real-world needs and expectations.

Building the Future Bioeconomy

C-SPIRIT’s vision sets clear markers for progress. We aim to establish a robust pipeline for rapid screening of candidate molecules linked to resilience traits and providing the market with novel products that improve crop resilience. Our international network of scientists is poised to strengthen a global workforce in sustainable agriculture and biomanufacturing. In broadening participation in biotechnology and engaging the public, C-SPIRIT recognizes that a bioeconomy can only succeed if new technologies are both effective and trusted.

This vision is already becoming reality. C-SPIRIT’s work is moving from abstract data to tangible solutions: identification-free metabolomics is shortening the path from signals to candidate traits, apoplastic metabolomics is revealing new ways to manage plant water use and carbon balance, studies of how different stresses interact are identifying the traits that matter most under climate extremes, and trait development in crops such as tomatoes shows the potential for farmer- and consumer-ready innovations.

Together, these advances show how science can provide the capacity to help agriculture withstand climate stress, reduce dependence on synthetic inputs, and create new opportunities in a rapidly growing bioeconomy. By coupling discovery with testing, safety, partnerships, and workforce development, C-SPIRIT is demonstrating how research can be turned into timely, vital solutions to benefit the world at large.

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