Following news of Avalo's exciting sugarcane-focused partnership with Coca Cola, CEO Brendan Collins discusses the company's journey since pitching at World Agri-Tech in London. 

Q: How is your technology helping solve agricultural challenges? 

A: Evolution is natures way of solving big problems. Plant breeding is out attempt to leverage evolution to solve big agricultural challenges. However breeding is slow, expensive, and cumbersome because the genome is very big, and very complex. Avalo uses AI to analyze and understand the full potential of a plant's genome, which allows us to efficiently breed plants with beneficial traits like drought tolerance, heat resistance, nutrient efficiency and more. This Rapid Evolution Platform™ can evolve any crop, but we are focused on essential global crops that have outsized environmental externalities like Cotton and Sugar. Our flagship product is cotton evolved to thrive in the increasingly arid Texas Cotton region - requiring no irrigation and far less fertilizer. 

Q: What is your relationship with farmers, and how are you engaging with them?

A: Farmers are at the core of everything we do, and we engage with them from the beginning of each project. We known they are the foundation of our food and fiber system, and have been historically left out of the value chain thats developed over the last 50 years. Our internal metrics for impact are "does this make agriculture more sustainable" and "do this make farms more profitable and resilient.

Q: What are Avalo's key milestones since featuring at World Agri-Tech?

A: We are excited to announce that we're planting Avalo Cotton with farmers in Texas this season. This means building relationships, honing processes, and gathering feedback and data that will help us smoothly and successfully scale up for broader commercial availability in 2026 and beyond. 

Q: What is your strategy for tackling the VC downturn/the current economic climate? What actions are you taking?

A: Our strategy is to look at our work the way farmers have for decades; focusing on the fundamentals. While our Rapid Evolution Platform is broadly applicable to any crop, we're focusing on areas that can deliver the most near term value to planet and farmer. We're also partnering with some of the worlds biggest and most established brands to develop programs that can scale their impact quickly. 

Q: Do you have any advice for start-ups who are fundraising in today’s challenging economic climate?

A: Aside from more generic advice that is increasingly sound at all times (eg: focus on solving real problems, and chase sustainable profitability), some advice in this market would be to more openly consider corporate investment partners. Economic headwinds and longer AgTech timelines don't deter corporates venture to the same degree, and it could be helpful to find the CPG or brand working in your space and seek a deeper partnership with them.

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