Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Innerplant

Watch This Video of Innerplant’s Glowing Plants in Action

InnerPlant is an agtech company that engineers plant DNA to turn them into “living sensors”. When plants glow a certain color, this signals that it is stressed from lack of water, pests, or nutrient deficiencies. This helps farmers spot stressed plants much more quickly than they normally would be able to, and therefore have a better chance of mitigating crop loss.

Last week, The Spoon was given a virtual zoom tour of the InnerPlant facilities and shown the glowing plants under lasers. The company had examples of the two plant species it is currently working with, tomatoes and Arabidopsis. The colored light is not visible to the human eye, so Roderick Kumimoto, the Chief Science Officer of InnerPlant, used different laser pointers to demonstrate the glow. In the field, farmers use InnerPlant’s augmented reality system to photograph with an iPhone or iPad to detect glowing plants.

As you can see, the engineered plants look just like the regular non-engineered plants in normal lighting. Turn the lights off and point a laser at them, the engineered tomato and Arabidopsis plants have a yellow, red-orange, and green glow.

To create the living sensor plants, InnerPlant adds a fluorescent protein (which is safe for human consumption) into the plant’s DNA. Different colors signal different problems. If the farmer is using satellites or drones to view the plants from above, then up to three colors can be detected. From a ground-level view, upwards of seven to eight colors can be seen.

The companies first products are tomato and Arabidopsis plants that signal if they are under attack by fungus or pests. Currently, the company is working on commercializing InnerSoy plants. After that, they plan to develop cotton and corn versions of their glowing plants.

InnerPlant Raises $5.65M to Turn Plants Into “Living Sensors” and Mitigate Crop Loss

Agtech company InnerPlant, which is changing plant DNA to create “living sensors” that mitigate crop loss, has raised $5.65 million in pre-seed and seed funding, according to an official announcement sent to The Spoon. The round was led by MS&AD Ventures, the investment arm of Japan’s MS&AD Insurance Group. Bee Partners, Up West, and TAU Ventures also participated in the round. 

InnerPlant created its technology platform to spot threats to plant growth — pests, nutrient deficiencies, water stress, etc. — quicker than is possible via traditional farming methods. To do that, the company recodes plant DNA to include a fluorescent safe-for-human-consumption protein that lights up the leaves of a plant when there is a problem. Essentially, it is turning the entire plant into a living signal that can “talk” to the farmer when there is a problem. Different colored lights indicate different issues.  

Since these signals are invisible to the human eye, farmers can use InnerPlant’s augmented reality system to photograph their fields and view potential problems via an iPhone or iPad. The signals can also be detected via a drone flying overhead or even a satellite.

This handy explainer video goes into more detail:

According to the company, it only takes tens of these sensor plants to protect an entire field. Once the signal plants send off a distress signal, a farmer can address the impacted area before it spreads to the whole crop. For example, if a harmful fungi breaks out in one area of a field, a farmer can get rid of only the impacted plants, instead of spraying the whole field with fungicide. Think of it as on-demand crop protection.  

InnerPlant says its entire concept is merely piggy-backing off the natural signals plants send to one another when they are in distress. Recoding the DNA to include the protein is “amplifying” these natural signals, so that farmers can spot problems faster. It also frees them from what InnerPlant founder and CEO Shely Aronov calls “the pesticide treadmill,” which is our increasing use of chemicals and pesticides that harm waterways, impact microbial diversity in soil, and are linked to some cancers.

It remains to be seen how consumers will feel about eating produce with recoded DNA, or how that message will get effectively communicated. And since InnerPlant is a relatively new company (it released its first product, the InnerTomato, in 2020), it is too soon to have much data on how effective these living plant sensors are compared to other modes of crop protection. 

The technology does, however, show us yet-another possibility for improving crop yields and mitigating loss in the food system at a time when the world’s population is growing. 

InnerPlant says it is currently working on a new product, InnerSoy. Funds from the seed and pre-seed rounds will go towards developing other products in future. 

Food Tech News: InnerPlant Launches Sensor Plants, $3.5 Million Grant for Cultivated Meat

I’m taking over the weekly Food Tech News post, and this week I bring you both plant-centric and meaty news. Money is being pumped into cultivated meat research, a plant-based burger company signed a partnership with a football team, and tomato plants can now tell you if they are feeling stressed. Oh, and the world’s smallest gum company raised $1.2 million in funding.

InnerPlant Launches “Living Sensor” Plants

InnerPlant, based in Davis, California, announced the launch of the InnerTomato™ this week. The tomato plants are fed a protein that amplifies the natural signals a plant releases to warn neighboring plants of different stressors. A farmer can use an iPhone, drone, or satellite to take a photo of the plants, and through augmented reality, will be able to see if the plant is a certain color. Different colors signal if the plant needs water, is stressed, or under attack from a certain disease or pest. This is InnerPlant’s first proprietary plant.

Photo from UC Davis’ Aggie Transcript

UC Davis Receives Funding For Cultivated Meat Research

UC Davis recently received a $3.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to research cultivated meat. One of the main goals of this five-year grant is to develop methods to amplify stem cells efficiently. Researchers aim to create methods that enable sustainably lab-grown meat to be an option for feeding a rapidly growing world population. This is the first major grant in the U.S. for cellular agriculture.

The World’s Smallest Gum Factory

Copenhagen-based True Gum just raised $1.2 million (USD) from a German VC Oyster Bay. True Gum makes plant-based gum that is free of petroleum ingredients (which are found in many gum brands), and instead uses a sustainably-sourced tree sap, called chicle, from South America as the main ingredient.

Planterra’s Brand, OZO, Partners With Denver Broncos

OZO, a brand of Colorado-based Planterra Foods, just signed a three-year partnership with the Denver Broncos. Planterra is a subsidiary of JBS Foods, the largest beef and pork processor in the world. OZO’s products include plant-based ground beef and burger patties made from pea protein, and are currently available in 12 U.S. states. As part of the partnership, OZO will be advertising at the Mile High Stadium and serving up its vegan burgers from its traveling food van.

The last time we brought up the Denver Broncos and the Mile High Stadium on The Spoon, it was to announce the installment of a beer-pouring robot at the stadium. Vegan stadium burgers and beer robots might be convincing enough to get me into a football stadium during a pandemic.

Tesco and Olio Team Up to Fight Food Waste

And in some non-meaty but still-sustainable news, Tesco and food-sharing app Olio announced this week they have partnered to fight food waste. Olio volunteers (of which there are around 8,000) will pick up surplus food at Tesco stores then upload it to the Olio app. Food is then distributed for free to households in need and community groups looking to help.

Tesco is launching this food-drive-like initiative across all 2,700 of its U.K. stores. The company said it was able to redirect 36 tons of food — which would have otherwise gone to waste — through an earlier trial of the program.