CoverCress just landed a $600,000 Phase II SBIR grant to develop anti-fungal varieties of their cover crop. At the same time they’ve just completed putting seeds in the ground that will be their first revenue crop next spring (fingers crossed).
This Phase II grant will build on work CoverCress CTO Tim Ulmasov and Danforth Center principal investigator Dilip Shah have been doing for three years as a proof of concept. That partnership continues as they now try to develop a commercially viable product.
Tim Ulmasov, CoverCress CTO
“Dilip Shah is a national expert in how plants protect themselves against fungal pathogens,” Ulmasov told the 4thEst8 this morning. “Phase two is rarely awarded… the idea is that now the money should be useful commercializing a promising idea.”
Commercialization:
The anti-fungal work builds on a platform that has yet to make a penny… but that’s changing. CoverCress just this week finished putting seeds in the ground that, when harvested, will be the first revenue for this now eight year old startup.
“What we’re going to be harvesting from much of our acreage this year is going to be grain (as opposed to seed, to be planted) and the most exciting part of it that is that much of the grain will be sold to a paying customer,” Ulmasov said. “And the customer is going to use it to feed the birds. And potentially that would be a first commercialization event for any productive cover crop.”
“Cover crops” are planted in the fall to improve soil retention and diversity, but so far none of the available cover crops grow something that can make a farmer money. They generally just get plowed under in the spring.
CoverCress is selectively breeding and gene editing the pennycress plant to reduce the fiber in its seeds by as much as 50 percent, thereby increasing both the oil it produces, and the nutritional value of the meal that remains after the oil is extracted.
The 4thEst8 first reported about CoverCress when the company landed its first patent in the summer of 2020. The patent covers taking that meal and turning it into animal feed. Unmodified pennycress variants are generally considered weeds, but CoverCress is developing a variety (also called CoverCress) intended as a ‘cover crop’ – to improve soil conditions and diversity over the winter, in between fall harvest and spring planting of row crops like corn and soybean. The bonus is that with the lower volume of fiber, CoverCress seeds effectively produce more oil and plant proteins – giving farmers another cash crop.
Today’s grant came from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
CoverCress was founded in 2013 as Arvegenix by ex-Monsanto executives Dennis Plummer, Michael Roth and Vijay Chauhan. The company has 20 full time employees, has brought in more than $10 million in grants and raised $19.9M. Crunchbase cites investors as Bungee Ventures, REG Ventures, St. Louis Arch Angels, Missouri Technology Corporation, The Yield Lab, Leaps by Bayer, Fulcrum Global Capital, Prolog Ventures, Prelude Ventures and BioGenerator.
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On the 4thEst8:
1st patent issued for agtech startup
