BioConsortia

About:

BioConsortia is an agricultural technology company that develops microbial consortia for increasing agricultural yields.

Website: http://bioconsortia.com

Top Investors: Khosla Ventures, Square 1 Bank, Otter Capital

Description:

BioConsortia is developing highly effective microbial consortia for increasing agricultural yields. Soil and plant-associated microbes interact with and supplement the functions encoded by the crop genome. Opportunities abound to exploit these plant-microbe interactions but overwhelming complexity and the huge amount of genetic diversity have hindered the realization of these by conventional R&D methods. BioConsortia has developed a revolutionary Advanced Microbial Selection (AMS) process for crop trait enhancement that uses iterative rounds of plant phenotyping and selection to co-select for beneficial changes in the microbiome. Isolates are obtained from the microbiome of plants expressing the desired traits and are developed as consortia for application as a commercial seed treatment, drench, or granule product. We have a pipeline of products for increased fertilizer utilization, growth improvement, and other beneficial crop traits, such as abiotic tolerance and enhanced metabolite expression.