Key Takeaways
- Amatera secured €6 million ($7 million) in seed funding to accelerate the development of climate-smart perennial crops.
- The startup utilizes innovative plant cell culture and high-throughput screening methods to reduce the time and cost of breeding new crop varieties.
- Future plans include partnerships for annual crop technology while advancing coffee and wine grape varieties in nurseries.
Innovative Approaches to Crop Development
Amatera, a startup based in France, has successfully raised €6 million (approximately $7 million) in seed funding. This financing aims to enhance the company’s efforts in developing climate-smart perennial crops through advanced technologies, specifically plant cell culture, robotics, and artificial intelligence. The funding round was co-led by Demea Sustainable Investment and Oyster Bay, with participation from existing investors including PINC, Mudcake, and Exceptional Ventures.
Cofounder Omar Dekkiche emphasized the lengthy traditional processes of breeding new coffee and wine grape varieties, which can span over 20 years and require substantial financial investment. “We are accelerating the breeding of perennial crops to create new varieties at a fraction of the cost and timeline,” he noted.
The companies’ methodology involves high-throughput screening at the plant cell culture stage, which significantly decreases both time and costs associated with generating and evaluating new plant varieties. Amatera was founded in 2022 by Dekkiche and Lucie Kriegshauser, PhD. Initially, the company focused on inducing spontaneous genetic variations in-house using various physical and chemical methods. This approach accelerates natural evolution, allowing for the creation of a vast library of non-GMO cell lines that are then sequenced and screened for favorable traits.
Dekkiche explained the process: “Today, the standard approach is to grow the plants first, then perform genotyping. We are completely changing this by isolating all the cells and growing them in culture at a lab scale. We identify promising cell lines and regenerate only those into plants, effectively removing the traditional screening bottleneck.”
This innovative high-throughput automated screening method can also be applied to cell lines produced through gene editing, showcasing the versatility of Amatera’s technology.
Despite acknowledging that plant cells in culture do not replicate all characteristics of mature plants, Dekkiche explained that certain genetic markers are predictive of whole-plant performance. “By generating genetic variability on these genes, you can modulate traits like caffeine levels in plants,” he added.
Business Model and Future Outlook
With its current focus on perennial crops, Amatera plans to develop and test its varieties internally before licensing them to others. For annual crops, the strategy shifts to providing technology solutions to integrate their advancements into existing pipelines.
After starting with coffee, Amatera has made strides in developing a unique “Robustica” coffee variety that combines resilience with exceptional taste, alongside a caffeine-free Arabica variant. In the wine sector, efforts are underway to create grape varieties resilient to prevalent diseases like downy mildew and black rot, signaling significant progress.
Looking ahead, Amatera is optimistic about signing multiple partnerships for annual crops this year, broadening its impact within the agricultural technology landscape.
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