Sprout Agritech invests $1m in Metrovate's sustainable farming tech

Sprout Agritech, an early-stage investor and commercialisation specialist for transformational technologies, has announced it's eighth investment of $1 million into Metrovate, a company working to revolutionise farming through the development of precision biostimulants.

Metrovate aspires to generate more effective and sustainable farming outcomes by merging agricultural science with advanced computational methods, 3D modelling, and machine learning. Their ultimate goal is to create products with precise modes of action that enhance plant growth and immunity, while preserving our planet through biodegradable, safe-to-apply solutions.

In recent years, climate change has posed significant threats to farming livelihoods and national food security, leading to steep pricing surges. Nikolai Macnee, Metrovate's Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, noted that these challenges underline the necessity for reliable tools to ensure crop resilience, speed recovery, and improve yield. He highlighted that "Metrovate's core value is producing food without harming our environment. To do this, our tooling needs to improve in a way that doesn't destroy waterways and rivers or augment our reliance on fossil fuels."

According to Macnee, most agricultural products stimulate growth at a cellular level, invariably affecting unintended targets like weeds and other vegetation, leading to potentially harmful consequences. Metrovate's ambitious approach revolves around isolating natural signalling molecules through molecular biology techniques to develop a precision-targeted biostimulant that restricts its effect to the intended parts of the crop.

Warren Bebb, Chief Investment Officer for Sprout Agritech, emphasised the innovative nature of Metrovate's plan. He remarked: "Traditional biostimulants are either safe to apply, but not entirely functional; or highly functional but based on synthetic chemicals that aren't safe. Metrovate's formula will be both safe to apply and functional, reimagining an important industry that is ripe for disruption in the form of more sustainable solutions."

Through the fusion of cutting-edge technology and molecular biology, Metrovate aims to design and refine biostimulants that do more than just promote overall growth. Instead, their goal is to attain a level of precision that enhances nutrition efficiency, stress tolerance, and even specific crop quality traits such as size.

By accelerating growth, precision biostimulants can mitigate the need for plant growth regulators, herbicides, pesticides, and less fertiliser per plant. Unlike genetic modification, these biostimulants can interact immediately with the native machinery of plant cells to prompt strong growth responses. Nikolai explained that "precision biostimulants like traditional biologicals can be applied to plants throughout the growth cycle including during flowering and late development unlike small molecules and hormones that are limited to early growth stages."

Metrovate has already received validation from industry-leading specialists and is actively engaging with the New Zealand market, with plans to collaborate with academic and industry groups in Europe.

The startup company is undergoing rapid growth, with recent recruitments in commercialisation and computational science. Metrovate's initial funding, which includes a grant from the Agricultural and Marketing Research and Development Trust (AGMARDT), will be used to validate efficacy and refine its first product for market requirements. Further field trials and research will proceed following the initial screening before they can scale a commercial solution.