Ryza Bio
The Challenge
The chemicals protecting our food from weeds are failing fast: we risk losing up to 80% of our most important food supplies globally. Herbicide companies can’t bring new products to market because they are bottlenecked by outdated testing methods that have driven the time and cost of discovery to 12 years and $300M per ingredient, with a 99% failure rate from lab to field. As a result, there have been no novel, resistance-breaking herbicides brought to market in over 30 years.
The Opportunity
Our discovery platform acts like a miniature greenhouse in the lab, integrating low cost sensors to capture the chemical warning signs plants immediately release when they are under attack. We use these signals to generate unique chemical fingerprints that reveal how the plant is responding to each herbicide within hours of application, instead of waiting days for visual symptoms to appear.
The team
