Many MindedStartup tests plant traits in single cells to speed up crop breeding
Amatera, founded in 2022 by Omar Dekkiche (CEO) and Lucie Kriegshauser (CTO), is building a platform that screens plant varieties at the cell culture stage rather than in whole plants. Single plant cells are isolated and grown in lab-scale culture. Only cell lines showing the desired traits are regenerated into full plants. The company says its pipeline for microculturing single plant cells is patented and combines cell biology with automation and robotics.
The company originally induced spontaneous genetic variation using physical and chemical methods, building a library of non-GMO cell lines that it sequences and screens. The same screening can also be applied to cell lines made by other methods, such as gene editing. Its first crops are coffee (naturally caffeine-free coffee, and a Robustica that tastes like Arabica) and wine grapes resistant to downy and powdery mildew.
This matters because breeding is slow and expensive when every candidate has to be grown as a whole plant. If traits can be checked in cells, more variety can be tested for less money, and crops can be adapted to disease and climate pressure sooner. Dekkiche expects at least five times cost savings and two times time savings against conventional methods.
The caveats are significant. Those savings are the CEO's expectations, not independent results, and the company is still generating lab data to measure them. Amatera has no cell-level screen for drought tolerance or yield. Its coffee work is in a validation phase and will take time to reach market. No seed company partnerships are announced yet, though Dekkiche says some will come in the coming months, including a move into annual staple crops. A seed round raised earlier in 2026 is meant to fund an autonomous, end-to-end device. AgFunder, parent of AgFunderNews, is an investor in Amatera.
Source: AgFunder News