Phytoform plants $5.7M into climate-resistant crop technology – TechCrunch
Summary
The biotechnology company with headquarters in London and Boston announced $5.7 million in funding, led by Eniac Ventures, to scale its artificial intelligence genome editing technology aimed at improving crops. Phytoform’s approach to developing new climate-resilient crops involves machine learning and genome editing technologies to determine the number of possible DNA sequence combinations in plants and identify new traits, while also reducing agriculture’s climate footprint. The success of CRISPR technology in agriculture has been well documented over the years as a way to manipulate plant genomes to make them more pest and climate resistant and grow more consistent products. “As the climate crisis worsens, we’ve looked closely at how computational genomics can be leveraged to reduce food waste and bring higher quality diverse produce to market. Meanwhile, the company’s initial business model will be royalty revenue from the sale of the seeds, but expects that to change as its customer base evolves all the way to the consumer, Pelton said.