March 30, 2018

It’s no secret that Israel has invested heavily in the agtech sector, with the domestic size and scope of the sector far outpacing the size of the country. Israel is challenged by both climate and the availability of arable land, and has subsequently turned to technological innovation and entrepreneurship to not only address its own needs for increased food production, but to address the growing global need and demand for food security.

Israel’s leading agtech accelerator, The Trendlines Group, regularly lends its insight on industry trends at Global AgInvesting (GAI) events. At AgTech Week 2017 in Boston, they led a panel examining the Investor/C-Suite relationship, and at AgTech Nexus 2017 in Dublin, they lent their expertise to a panel on the effectiveness of the accelerator model. That’s why it’s especially interesting to take a look at some of the companies that are participating in a competition led by Trendlines, GreenSoil Investments, and Israel New Tech (part of the Israeli Ministry of Economy).

These  11 Israeli start-ups, selected from more than 40 companies that applied, were chosen by an independent committee headed by Professor Avi Perl, the chief scientist of Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture.

AgreMatch — Developing an algorithm that analyzes different types of data and uses machine learning to find links between known compounds and unmet agricultural needs.

AquiNovo — Developing non-GMO, non-hormonal growth enhancers for accelerating fish growth of farmed fish to meet the ever-growing demand for fish protein.

FlyingSpark — Developing a technology to produce superior animal protein from fruit fly larvae and finding new ways of incorporating larvae protein into food products for human consumption.

FruitSpec — Developing a system for highly accurate estimates/projections of fruit yields based on multispectral machine vision technology; uses applied computer vision and an AI algorithm to automatically count and estimate fruit number and size – even when the fruit is green.

HiGrade — Developing fast, low-cost, non-destructive cannabis analytics; utilizing machine learning technologies, HiGrade allows users to identify the potency, quality, strain, and other critical traits of the plant within seconds.

MetoMotion — Developing a multipurpose robotic system for automating labor-intensive tasks in greenhouses to address the advancing labor crisis and rising costs in vegetable harvesting.

PlantArcBio — Developing a Direct In Plant platform (DIP™) to screen millions of plants with unique genes from any possible source, and with no prior knowledge of the plant; enables fast discovery of promising genes such as drought tolerance, yield improvement, insect control, and herbicide tolerance.

Skyx — Developing the “brain” for a modular swarm of autonomous spraying robots; system includes an optimized mission planning, auto-execution, and real-time control of each robot.

Unavoo — Developing a sweetening platform (HEYLO) to fully eliminate sugars and artificial sweeteners from food and beverages; innovative sweetening blend offers an all-natural, zero-glycemic solution that is safe for diabetics, pre-diabetics, and people seeking healthy alternatives to sugar.

Water.io — Developing an Internet of Packaging (IoP) platform that turns almost any Consumer-Packaged Goods (CPG) into a smart parcel, which generates data to reduce hand- or NFC-based technology checking.

WeedOut — Developing a biological herbicide to eradicate resistant weeds; based on the development of proprietary weed pollen applied via artificial pollination for weed seed abortion to block the next generation of viable weed seeds.

The winners will be chosen at AgriVest 2018: https://www.agrivestisrael.com/

By David Nitchman, GAI Media