[Disclosure: AgFunderNews’ parent company AgFunder is an investor in OlsAro.]
OlsAro—a Swedish startup developing salt tolerant wheat and other crops resilient to environmental stressors— has raised a €5 million ($5.5 million) seed round to develop its SeedAX platform as it gears up for commercial launch in 2027.
The round was co-led by Industrifonden and Nordic Foodtech VC and supported by Future Food Fund, PINC, AgFunder, and GU Ventures and brings the firm’s cumulative funding to €7.5 million ($8.3 million).
OlsAro said the cash injection would help it accelerate commercial work, fund new programs on drought tolerance and nitrogen-use efficiency, and support moves into other cereal crops such as rice.
“What convinced us about OlsAro was the scientific work behind the company, together with its field-trial results and existing seed-company partnerships. With SeedAX, OlsAro has the opportunity to turn this into a scalable platform for seed companies looking to develop climate-resilient varieties across multiple traits and markets.” Sara Frykstrand Ångström, investment manager and head of intelligence, Industrifonden
Farming on unfarmable land
Salinity affects around a tenth of the world’s cropland, while heat and drought are compounding pressure on cereal production, increasing the need for varieties that can maintain yields in more challenging conditions.
While a fair amount of work has gone into research on salt tolerant rice, there are few options in wheat, claimed CEO Elén Faxö.
“We’re seeing a steady reduction in the amount of cultivatable land due to soil salinity, which can mean lower yields or at worst no growth at all. This higher salinity is in part due to flooding and cyclones, but also due to the lack of freshwater, where farmers have been irrigating with saline water or brackish water, so it’s a huge addressable market.”
OlsAro is on a mission to “enable farming on otherwise unfarmable land” and claims it can help partners deliver meaningful increases in yield vs elite local varieties in saline soil.
Field trials in multiple markets
OlsAro’s first product—salinity-resilient wheat—has shown an up to 41% yield increase over a moderately salt-tolerant variety under saline conditions in Bangladesh and is now being trialed in multiple markets, Faxö told AgFunderNews.
“Bangladesh remains one of our lead markets, and we’re working with Lal Teer Seed [the largest private biotech and seed company in Bangladesh] towards a commercial launch in 2027. Around one million hectares in Bangladesh are affected by salinity, while demand for locally grown wheat keeps rising, so the need is clear.”
It is also conducting field trials for salt- and heat-tolerant wheat in several other markets, she said.
“Our salt-tolerant wheat is in advanced trials in markets including Kenya and Pakistan. Other markets for salt and heat tolerance field trials are Egypt, Italy, Canada and Australia. Because our commercial varieties are developed without genetic modification, we can enter these markets without GM regulation hurdles.”
In India, OlsAro has been working with partners including DCM Shriram, the largest player in proprietary wheat seeds in India, which has conducted trials of OlsAro salt tolerant wheat lines in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
“India is a market with significant potential for us, where we have ongoing collaborations, including field trials of our climate-resilient wheat,” said Faxö. “With close to seven million hectares of salt-affected soils and rising heat stress, the need for more resilient wheat in India is growing.”
OlsAro’s varieties are designed to outperform conventional wheat at 4–8 deciSiemens (dS/m) per meter and up to 10 dS/m, she explained.
“That range runs from moderately to strongly saline soils, where conventional wheat starts losing a lot of its yield. It’s also where a large share of salt-affected farmland sits, so even moderate gains there can bring land back into productive use.”
“We have spent years proving that we can identify and develop genetics that perform under some of the conditions putting the greatest pressure on agriculture. This round is about turning that capability into a platform that seed companies can use repeatedly. Elén Faxö, CEO, OlsAro
Two development paths depending on regulatory landscape
According to Faxö, OlsAro has two development paths that can be deployed depending on the regulatory landscape in markets it is targeting.
The first is what she calls a “population-based approach” using EMS mutagenesis, “where we treat the seeds with a specific substance to introduce very high genetic diversity. We can then commercialize varieties with desired traits from screening in our populations.
“The advantage is that it’s non-GM globally, so we can target any market without being considered GM.”
OlsAro’s second development path is gene editing, she said.
“For trait discovery, we use AI to screen down on the SNPs [single nucleotide polymorphisms or genetic variations] of interest for our target traits, then the next step is to go for integrating the trait via gene editing or our population-based approach in local elite varieties. The strength of our AI is that we have plenty of proprietary data that we can feed the AI system with, in addition to open-source data.”
Underpinning this is a “database of genomic data, field data, transcriptomics and so on. And then we also have AI that enables us to speed development that we are continuously building on,” added Faxö.
“When we speak about a population-based approach, it’s both forward and reverse, which means that we both do phenotypic screening (looking at the physical traits or characteristics of a plant) from within the populations to find the variety or the line of interest with a certain trait. We also do genotypic screening (looking at the DNA of the plant) based on AI-derived traits we have identified from within the population for variety development.”
Further reading
With trials underway in multiple markets, OlsAro takes salt-tolerant wheat closer to market
Heat, salinity, drought… SaliCrop tackles abiotic stress trifecta with seed enhancement tech
Guest article: There’s a market for saline agriculture. It just needs a boost
