Technology

Yeast production techniques are well understood and easily scalable, allowing for efficient and inexpensive production. With yeast already a commonly used product throughout the food system, Index’s BioTags are designed for seamless integration into production pipelines. Furthermore, in comparison to naked DNA barcode solutions, the structural features and inherent natural defences of the yeast cell serve as an amazing protective capsule for our identifiers. The result – a safe, easily scalable, reliably and uniquely traceable product.

A BioTag is a small, inert and unique sequence of DNA.  Our BioTags are safely added to an organism solely for the purpose of traceability and identification.

BioTag-carrying yeast cells can be added, mixed, sprayed or affixed to any product that can benefit from end-to-end supply chain biological traceability and identification. Unique BioTags can even be applied at multiple nodes along a supply chain or within subsections of a lot or component of a product.  This flexibility of spatial and temporal granularity of where and when BioTags can be incorporated, lets the BioTag tell story of a product’s origin and journey from beginning to end.

Traditional traceability technologies tend to be incorporated into non-biological components of a product, such as a label, sticker, printable surface or affixed to a container that holds a product. They have their place; however when the goal is to trace, differentiate or segregate food system products, these solutions miss the mark. These traditional technologies can not be processed, consumed, and in many instances, are not biodegradable. Food system products require a customizable biological traceability solution.

• Food safety: BioTags applied to a head of romaine lettuce could provide rapid source-of-origin information (ex. Growing region, grower, specific farm location, harvest date, etc.) in the event of an E.Coli outbreak greatly reducing time and scope of recalls.
• Fraud Prevention: BioTags can be added in trace to products at high risk of adulteration (ex. Olive oil, honey, wine, seeds, etc.) to provide investigators definitive evidence of infringement but also provide detailed batch level information on the source of any breech.
• Certification: BioTags can be applied to products requiring identification guarantees regarding country of origin, GMO status or ethical sourcing.
• Branding/IP Protection: BioTags can be applied at batch levels. This may provide intellectual property owners with definitive evidence of infringement. Consider an IP infringement investigation, detecting the BioTag, and learning that the identified product was only intended to be used by a particular customer for some time period. Cost recovery suddenly becomes much more simple.

BioTags are detectable in trace amounts. Standard lab techniques and infield detection kit options are available.

Every BioTag includes a unique identifying sequence. These identifiers are stored in Trailhead, Index’s BioTag digital registry. BioTag registry entries contain data related to its manufacturing, client and intended use, including any additional information that may be relevant to the value chain.