Technology
Today
Frosts are the greatest threat to agrifood security.
Frosts cause more crop losses than any other climate-related hazards worldwide. On top of losses, frosts limit our growing seasons.
in average annual
North American losses
Up to
in average annual
losses by 2050
Single frost events can wipe out even more than the annual average in a matter of hours or days. These freak frosts are increasing in frequency and severity globally due to climate change.
Such catastrophic frost events typically occur in the late spring at critical developmental stages when untimely freezing temperatures cause fatal ice crystals to form within plant tissues.
Protection
Conventional technologies are falling short.
Today's frost protection technologies are costly, inefficient, and unsustainable.
High capital requirements are a major barrier for smallholder and row crop growers, limiting protection to high value crops where consumer prices offset costs of frost protection. Additional challenges including labour availability and uncooperative weather conditions, further contributing to crop losses.
But most importantly, existing protection technologies fail to address the root cause of frost: ice nucleating bacteria. Instead, these methods aim to warm plants and have remained fundamentally unchanged for over 2000 years.
Climate change, population growth, and the need to produce 50% more food by 2050 underscores the need for innovation. Our research has made a new alternative possible.
Our approach
A new method of frost protection.
Through new modes of action, our technology directly combats the cause of frost. These capabilities are packed within shelf stable biological products containing active microbes for convenient seed or foliar application.
This approach allows us to provide effective frost protection and help growers reduce costs, losses, and environmental impacts.
Our goal is to create more cost-effective and easily adopted tools for growers to protect their crops and ultimately save time and money.
We estimate that our technology may save growers as much as $50,000 per acre per season in specialty high value crop sectors such as vineyards.
How it works
New modes of action.
Combat
Ice crystals form on and within plants during untimely freezing temperatures, catalyzed by ubiquitous ice nucleating bacteria.
We combat them.
Disarm
Ice nucleating bacteria rely on their own weapons to facilitate ice crystal formation.
We disarm them.
Deny
Once formed, ice crystals grow larger and larger, leading to injury and crop loss.
We deny it.
Protect
Taken together, our approach aims to provide growers with the best weapon against frost.
Recent frosts
Frost events don't respect borders.
While some regions are more prone to frosts, we are seeing devastating frost events occur in more regions. Every year somewhere in the world there is a grower saying "we have never seen frost like this before." They can happen anywhere in the world and they will get worse.
Zoom in on the map for details. Values are reported in 2024 USD.