An agri-tech start-up that seeks to accelerate its use of microbes to treat crop seeds to produce healthier plants and reduce fertiliser requirements has received a €1.3 million investment.
CropBiome – a joint University College Dublin (UCD) and Trinity College Dublin (TCD) spinout – will use the funds to scale up its team amid plans to carry out trials with major seed distributors in Europe’s largest grain markets – the UK, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Germany, France and Spain.
This investment was announced by Halo Business Angel Network (HBAN), an all-island organisation responsible for the promotion of business angel investment, and a joint initiative of Enterprise Ireland, InterTradeIreland and Invest Northern Ireland.
Based at NovaUCD, CropBiome sources, selects, ferments, characterises and tests microbes derived from wild plant species that are formulated into biological products such as seed dressings for use in agriculture.
The aim is to help farmers reduce dependence on chemicals and fertilisers for growing healthy crops, even in drought conditions.
A combination of field and greenhouse crop trials have shown that the seed dressings can improve crops’ performance in drought conditions, and when fertiliser use is reduced.
This results in reduced chemical inputs, enhanced crop resilience and improved soil health – all providing targetted economic benefits to farmers.
“Pressure is mounting on food producers across the world to move to a more sustainable food model,” said CropBiome CEO, Sean Daly.
“A key aim of the EU Farm to Fork Strategy is to reduce chemical use in agriculture – including fertilisers, fungicides, pesticides.”
Currently, CropBiome has a biobank of more than 600 microbes, which the company is testing to determine their impact on stress resistance, nutrient-use efficiency, and overall crop yields.
“It also targets the reduction of nutrient losses by at least 50%, while ensuring that there is no deterioration in soil fertility. The European Commission has indicated that a reduction in fertiliser use of at least 20% by 2030 will be needed to achieve these targets across the EU,” Daly added.
He said, initially, CropBiome will aggressively tackle the European grain market, which represents a significant proportion of the world’s total grain production, with its “unique sustainable biological solutions”.
These are the result of five years of extensive scientific research by its founders Prof. Fiona Doohan at UCD and Prof. Trevor Hodkinson and Dr. Brian Murphy at TCD.
“We aim to enter the market at a similar price point as existing chemical seed-coating products with our biological sustainable alternative and believe that this will give us a major competitive advantage,” the CropBiome CEO said.
The expectation is that by 2025, the company’s success in Europe will enable expansion into North and South America, Australasia and other cereal-producing regions and countries.
Funding
In addition to this latest funding, together with UCD and other partners, in 2021 CropBiome successfully submitted a €1.5 million Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund (DTIF) grant application.
The DTIF is run by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment with administrative support from Enterprise Ireland.
CropBiome secured €500,000 of this against proposed expenditure. In 2020, it was a regional winner of InterTradeIreland’s Seedcorn Investor Readiness Competition.