Skip to content

Image credits: Andrey Onufrienko/Getty Images

Pluton Biosciences is hard at work discovering beneficial microorganisms and applying them to agriculture, and just raised $16.5 million to commercialize its most promising discoveries.

The company raised its $6.6 million seed in 2021, and I reported at the time on its approach to identifying and isolating microbes and bacteria that do useful work. Nature is pretty good at solving problems through billions of years of evolution, and there is enormous biodiversity in every scoop of soil or microbiome.

As exciting as it is to isolate and study dozens of new micro-organisms that enter science, ultimately Pluto had to choose one that would work as a product, not just a blueprint. They settled on what they call a “microbial cover crop,” which captures and assimilates carbon and nitrogen in the soil. This process is not only good for crops and the environment, but is also a potentially very valuable market; Pivot Bio has raised a monster $430 million in 2021 to commercialize a microbial alternative to nitrogen-filled fertilizer.

“We have very repeatable laboratory and greenhouse data for several products that remove carbon and nitrogen from the atmosphere and place it in the soil. Early testing confirmed growth on soil during the target season of agricultural fields,” CEO and CFO Elizabeth Gallegos said in response to questions from TechCrunch. Field trials this year should quantify the sequestration process and how the product affects (probably positively) the soil.

At the same time, R&D continues along the carbon-friendly and generally environmentally friendly lines;

“We have discovered new microbes that produce long-lived carbon that will remain in the soil for decades and have the potential to be used in industries outside of agriculture,” Gallegos said. And one of their microbes led them to discover a new molecule that acts as an insecticide against a particular pest, the fall armyworm, which could be their next big product.

The company has doubled from 8 to 17 people, and expects to double within the next year. The physical size of their office and lab also doubled and can be expected to continue to grow as well.

The new round of funding was led by Illumina Ventures and RA Capital, which tend to focus on genomics, precision health and other life science verticals. Fall Line Capital, The Grantham Foundation, First In Ventures, Wollemi, Radicle Growth and iSelect also participated in the raise.



[ad_2]

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *