Starting this time last year, Viridys Bio co-founders Stuart Dixon and Rotem Berman have already raised £792k in funding across grants and equity including investment from Carbon13. Their bio-tech solution detects Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) that measure if a plant is infested with disease or pests. Offering a simpler and more affordable alternative to complex technologies, Viridys’ colour-changing sensors are designed to be accessible across the agricultural industry. Now, the founders are now developing their first biosensor prototype for glasshouse tomatoes.
Guests: Rotem (Co-Founder, biophysicist/synthetic biology lead) and Stuart (Co–Founder, commercial lead).
The science
Sara: Hello everybody, I’m once again joined by an incredible and super timely startup from Carbon13, which is Viridys Bio. So, tell us, what does Viridys Bio do in a nutshell?
Stuart : Visual means of detecting crop pests and disease is a lagging indicator. By the time you see something wrong, the damage is largely done, and the pests or disease have spread across your crop. By listening to signals the plants give off we can save days, if not weeks, of that time. And that time provides optionality and options to farmers to act with much gentler chemistry, and to save a lot of money.
And that’s basically what we’re doing: turning those invisible signals that happen at the earliest stages of infection into something visible, something people can act on now.
The problem
Sara: Right. Okay, so let’s spell it out for everybody, why do we want early prevention? What are the problems we’re solving with early prevention, both for the climate and for industry?
Stuart : Well, look, the terrible statistic is that less than 1% of the crop protection sprayed hits the target. In some cases, it’s significantly less than that. If you think the global pesticide market is $30 billion a year, forgetting the crop loss associated with it, that’s chemicals doing nasty things, and less than 1% hits what it needs to. So, it’s a huge waste, from an economic perspective.
So, it’s a real issue, and that’s one of the things that compels us to look at it. The scale of the inefficiency is so dramatic that small improvements can have an outsized effect. That’s what we’re aiming to do, conservatively, we’re modelling savings of 25% of pesticide costs and 40% of their damaging environmental impact. The reality is we feel we can do better than that, but the scale is huge.
The solution
Sara: Okay, so obviously it’s a huge problem, and you’re not the only ones who’ve thought about this. What can you tell us about the technology and the breakthrough that differentiates it from other ways of detecting pests or plant stress?
Rotem: Yes, so we talked about VOCs, volatile organic compounds, and the science of understanding what plants are producing. The other side of the scientific advance we’re building on is synthetic biology.
Synthetic biology, and specifically biosensing through biological systems, has advanced a lot in the last decade, and I’ve been part of that technological advancement in my own work. Now we can sense volatiles through the lock, and, key mechanism of the biology itself, so it’s very specific and very sensitive.
We don’t need complicated electronics. We can take this very complicated science and package it for farmers to use. It’s cheap and durable. That combination, taking the mechanism, engineering it into biology, and packaging it simply, is unique to our product. We haven’t seen it anywhere else, and it answers a lot of the market’s need for this kind of product.
Sara: Yeah, because we’ve seen quite highly engineered AI vision sensors but you’re saying this is going to be much easier to deploy. And end of life is important too, because it’ll be compostable or something?
Rotem: We take on the complexity, but the farmer just sees something that looks like a sticker that changes colour, which he can put in lots of places around the facility. It looks to him like the sticky trap he’s already familiar with, no maintenance, no complication. And it’s not limited to areas already working with cameras and infrastructure. This can also be used in lower tech facilities and greenhouses that can’t afford, or don’t have access to, high tech systems. It opens a real revolution, the sector is no longer limited.
For angels
Sara: What’s the one takeaway you’d want any potential angels listening to this to have about Viridys Bio?
Rotem: I think, from my perspective, it’s what we’ve touched on, the scale of the problem we’re facing, plus the opportunity that the simplicity and elegance of powerful, yet incredibly scalable, sensors provide. We’re giving growers and distributors time, and that time gives them the option to act more efficiently, more cost effectively, and more sustainably.
Sara: Okay, I can’t wait to see how you guys develop. Report back to us on how the prototypes and pilots go. Stuart and Rotem, thank you so much for talking to me.