Cibus and Crystal Crop Protection Team Up to Improve India’s Mustard Crop

SAN DIEGO and NEW DELHI, Sept. 28, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Crystal Crop Protection Limited (“Crystal Crop”), an Indian crop solutions company, and Cibus, Inc. (Nasdaq: CBUS) a technology company that uses biology to produce sustainable ingredients and helps farmers grow more food with fewer inputs, today announced an agreement to develop gene-edited traits in Brassica juncea (“Mustard”). Mustard is the oilseed at the heart of Indian cooking, and India grows more of it than any other country, on roughly 8.5 million hectares (21 million acres). Even so, India imports more than half of the edible oil it consumes, roughly 17 million tonnes a year, most of it palm and soybean oil. A better-performing mustard crop could mean more income for the grower and more of India’s cooking oil grown at home.

Cibus helps make good crops better, changing the speed and scale of plant breeding. Its platform makes precise changes to a plant’s own genes, with no foreign DNA added, and can deliver improved varieties in a fraction of the time of conventional breeding. Under the agreement, Crystal Crop will collaborate with Cibus to develop gene-edited traits in Brassica juncea and evaluate and commercialize such traits under an exclusive license in India. Crystal Crop brings its mustard production program, its knowledge of India’s seed market, and a network of more than 14,823 independent distribution partners across 23 states and four union territories across India, as of March 31, 2026, so improved seed can reach farmers at scale.