The Future of Food: Bryan Berger’s Quest for a Better Harvest

As a boy, Bryan Berger wandered through his father’s engineering workplace studying blueprints and watching complex systems come apart and get put back together. The fascination never left him “I was sort of a nerdy science kid,” he said. Now a professor of chemical and biomedical engineering at UVA, he has channeled that curiosity into a career spent reinventing how the world grows and protects its food.

This year, the UVA Licensing & Ventures Group named him its 2025 Edlich-Henderson Innovator of the Year, recognizing research that is reshaping how food can be produced more safely and with less harm to the environment.

Berger’s research centers on one of the most urgent challenges of the coming decades: feeding a rapidly growing population without sacrificing environmental health. Concern for soil, water, and ecosystem resilience runs through everything he does.

I care deeply about protecting our environment, so it is there for future generations to enjoy. With a projected 9 billion people to feed by 2050, this is a major challenge.

BBBryan BergerProfessor, Chemical Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Science

That commitment led him to found Lytos Technologies in 2018, built on protein based biotechnologies from his UVA lab. In 2019, with support from the UVA Licensing & Ventures Group, Lytos licensed his patented biofungicide technology, laying the groundwork for a platform of innovations aimed at improving food safety while protecting natural resources.

Technologies from his lab now enable the detection and removal of foodborne pathogens, support animal health, and reduce spoilage across the agricultural supply chain. The work has drawn serious interest from companies in crop protection and specialty agriculture, including growers of apples and wine grapes. One focus of his current work is fire blight, a destructive disease affecting apple orchards which has long been managed with antibiotics. Berger and his collaborators are developing alternatives that can replace or sharply reduce antibiotic use during the growing season. The effort is conducted in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and research and industry teams nationwide.

Last year, Lytos opened a 4,000 square foot facility in Waynesboro to expand its production capacity, giving UVA students hands-on experience moving discoveries from the lab into the field. “It’s a great way for students to see how what they’re doing in the lab can translate into a biotechnology solution to an unmet need,” he said.

This story originally appeared in the 2026 Annual Research Report, produced by the Office of the Vice President of Research. Find more stories from this report here:  https://news.research.virginia.edu