Paris-based biotech firm Amatera has raised €1.5 million Pre-seed round. The round was led by PINC (Paulig’s venture arm) and included participation from Exceptional Ventures, Mudcake, Joyance Partners, Agfunder and some angel investors including Nicolas Morin-Forest from Gourmey.
Amatera has developed a non-GMO breeding platform for use with perennial crops, accelerating the selection and crossing of plants and advancing plant cell culture. First, its methods are being used to preserve coffee plants helping them to adapt to the environment they are now expected to grow in, due to climate change and diseases.
“Our approach is based on accelerating the plant’s natural evolution at the cellular level, which is an alternative non-GMO route to genome editing. The technology as such is not new but applying it to perennial crops such as coffee is, since they are more complicated and require several breakthroughs in cell biology," says Lucie Kriegshauser, CTO of Amatera.
"This is also why gene editing techniques are struggling. Our technology is a real game-changer and opens up the avenue to applying it on several other crops, such as cacao, bananas and grapes or even pharmaceutical plants," says Kriegshauser who founded the firm with Omar Dekkiche.
“We love the disruptive potential and versatility of the platform since it can be used on several crops. Coffee has traditionally not received as much research and innovation as many other crops globally, and as coffee is one of Paulig’s core products, we are of course happy that Amatera’s first solution involves coffee," says Marika King, Head of PINC.
Lead image: via Amatera. Photo: Uncredited.
Would you like to write the first comment?
Login to post comments