Many ingredients for food, cosmetics and therapeutics are unsustainably sourced

The Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture awarded Seedling Biosystems Inc. $179,086 on September 15, 2025, under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program (CFDA 10.212) to develop Precision Germination, a production method using soybean seeds as mini-bioreactors to sustainably manufacture small molecule and protein ingredients for food, cosmetics, and therapeutics applications. The method addresses unsustainable sourcing of ingredients such as squalene, which is currently derived primarily from deep-sea sharks; the recipient's approach aims to replace shark-derived squalene with soybean-based alternatives that reduce environmental impact and supply-chain volatility while achieving cost parity with conventional sources. The award funds Phase I research to demonstrate technical feasibility of the innovation and validate its commercial potential. Performance occurs in Boulder, Colorado, with a completion date of August 14, 2026. The SBIR program supports small businesses in developing innovative, disruptive technologies with high technical risk and significant commercial or societal benefit, advancing research from conception toward market application.

This causes stress on our natural resources and creates scarcity which destabilizes supply chains and increases costs. For example, squalene is an important ingredient in skin care products, health supplements, and an essential component of some vaccines. Unfortunately, squalene is mainly sourced from deep sea sharks, resulting in 2.7 million shark deaths annually. The cosmetic industry has made significant efforts to phase out the use of shark squalene in its product formulations, yet sharks still account for roughly 50% of the global supply. Olive trees are steadily becoming more popular as a source of squalene in cosmetics, but alternative sources such as olive trees are more expensive and harder to purify because of lower yields. Olive-derived squalane is 30% more expensive than that from shark livers. Because of this added expense, a majority of the industry still relies on shark liver oil at great cost to marine ecosystems. These industries are under immense consumer pressure to use an alternative source. Seedling biosystems has a solution. Our team is developing a new approach to use soybeans to sustainably produce small molecule and protein ingredients. We call our unique production method precision germination. In precision germination, soybean seeds act as mini-bioreactors stockpiled with all the cells and nutrients needed for growth. Plus, their own immune, gas exchange and nutrient control systems needed for production. The soybeans are combined into a larger, simple reactor and germinated to begin protein or small molecule expression. Precision germination is a next generation improvement upon current expression platforms such as molecular farming and precision fermentation. Molecular farming with bioengineered plants typically produces specialized ingredients while growing in the field. In contrast, precision fermentation uses bioengineered microbes to convert plant biomass to specialized ingredients in controlled bioreactors. Our method of precision germination combines the best aspects of molecular farming with precision fermentation by scaling cell growth in the field while only producing specialized ingredients in controlled bioreactors. Precision germination will increase the economic competitiveness of the US by building new markets for US soybean farmers. The new manufacturing platform will increase the economic competitiveness of the US by turning a waste stream of soybean farming into new products such as squalene. The precision germination platform will make many scarce ingredients available at lower costs to consumers. While squalene is the beachhead product for seedling biosystems, our method of precision germination represents a platform technology that can eventually be used to supply a number of specialized ingredients to the US consumer at lower prices and minimal environmental impacts. Our first objective is to determined which SOY, bean cultivar is able to produce the most squalene by precision germination. Once the optimal soybean cultivar is selected, we will be able to record acreage and bushels of soybeans need to produce specific amounts of squalene. We will also be able to track how the remaining meal and oil is circulated back into the traditional soybean markets. Our second objective is to build the first prototype bioreactor for precision germination. Once the prototype has been perfected, we will be able to scale production ready bioreactors and sell squalene to manufactures within and outside of the US. We will be able to track how much squalene, in terms of weight and dollar, we are moving throughout the united states and abroad. By diversifying how american SOY can be utilized for the market while still contributing the byproducts towards traditional SOY markets, we will add novel markets to the SOY economy and allow US to be the only company producing squalene within the US.