Company has signed a ”significant commercial agreement” with Dutch seed company Erma Zaden
Agritech startup CapsiBreed has signed a significant commercial agreement with Dutch seed company Erma Zaden, a strategic partnership described as a “major milestone” in the development and scalability of its crop improvement technology.
The agreement will focus on enhancing the genetic qualities of hybrid hot and bell pepper seeds, using CapsiBreed’s proprietary gene editing platform.
Under the terms of the agreement, Erma Zaden will provide elite parental seed lines, which CapsiBreed will modify by introducing novel agricultural traits, including improved shelf-life, biotic and abiotic stresses, flavour, yield, colour, and emerging consumer preferences such as crispiness.
In addition to peppers, the agreement gives CapsiBreed access to Erma Zaden’s other products, including tomatoes, cucumber, melons and watermelons.
“This is a major milestone for CapsiBreed,” said Dr Oded Skaliter, co-founder and CTO of CapsiBreed. “This agreement marks CapsiBreed’s entry into the big leagues, serving as a testament to the company’s technology and capabilities.
”It underscores the adoption of advanced molecular breeding techniques and highlights CapsiBreed’s growing impact in the industry.
”CapsiBreed’s proprietary platform allows us to harness the power of molecular tools for breeding of hot and sweet peppers, that unlike other crops from its family, like tomatoes and tobacco, are notoriously known as highly recalcitrant for gene modification techniques,” he continued.
”Our technology removes this bottleneck, enabling the efficient application of molecular breeding techniques to rapidly and precisely introduce multiple desirable traits –such as disease resistance and enhanced flavour – that were previously unattainable through traditional pepper breeding.
”This collaboration will help us bring improved agricultural produce to the global market,” he outlined.
The collaboration builds upon the practice of hybrid breeding, crossing two parent seed lines (Parent A and Parent B) to create superior offspring.
Yet, introducing new traits into both parental lines by traditional breeding techniques can be ”laborious, time consuming, costly and is limited to existing genetic pools”, the company said.
”By integrating CapsiBreed’s cutting-edge technology will allow to speed up and elevate the process to a new level of precision and innovation,” it stated.
”The result: Hybrid seeds with unmatched combinations of qualities, optimised not only for farmers and food producers but also to the pharma industry and for rapidly evolving consumer trends.”
CapsiBreed is a portfolio company of Hebrew University of Jerusalem, through its technology transfer company Yissum.
Yissum played a key role in facilitating the collaboration and bringing CapsiBreed’s research-based innovation to market.
“This partnership embodies Yissum’s mission to transform academic excellence into real-world solutions,” said Alon Natanson, CEO of Yissum. “CapsiBreed’s breakthrough is not just an academic achievement – it’s a significant commercial leap forward for sustainable agriculture.”
The group pointed out that, as global agriculture grappled with mounting pressures such as climate change, the growing demand for healthier, nutritious food and sustainable farming practices, new technological solutions were gaining traction across the industry.
The agreement between CapsiBreed and Erma Zaden reflected a broader shift toward the use of advanced gene-editing tools to enhance crop performance and resilience, it explained.
“This is the future of agriculture,” said Dr Oded Sagee, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Capsibreed. “Seed companies that do not adopt gene-editing technologies will fall behind.
”Meeting the global need for more resilient, high-quality crops requires innovation,” he added. ”This is the next green revolution – and it’s already underway.”
