Amatera raises $7 million seed round to develop climate-resilient crop varieties

Amatera, a startup developing plant-breeding technology for climate-resilient crops, has raised €6 million ($7 million) in a seed funding round to expand its research platform.

The round was co-led by Demea Sustainable Investment and Oyster Bay Venture Capital, with participation from existing investors PINC, Mudcake and Exceptional Ventures. The funding will support the expansion of the company’s breeding technology and help extend its work beyond coffee and wine grapes into additional crops.

Founded in 2022 by Omar Dekkiche and Lucie Kriegshauser, the company combines plant cell culture, robotics and artificial intelligence to screen plant cell lines for desirable genetic traits before regenerating them into full plants.

Plant breeding for perennial crops such as coffee and grapes can take decades using conventional techniques. Amatera’s approach focuses on identifying promising traits at the cellular stage, which can reduce the number of plants that must be grown and tested in field trials.

The technology generates genetic variation through physical and chemical processes that produce non-genetically modified cell lines. These cell lines are sequenced and screened to identify genetic markers linked to desired traits, after which selected candidates are regenerated into plants for nursery and field testing.

The company’s initial work has focused on coffee and wine grapes. Current projects include developing coffee varieties with improved resilience to heat and disease and grape varieties resistant to pathogens such as downy mildew and black rot.

Amatera plans to license new perennial crop varieties to industry partners. For annual crops, the company intends to offer its screening technology to seed companies seeking to accelerate breeding programs.