Massachusetts-based Clean Crop Technologies has launched a commercial cold plasma seed treatment facility, signed $3.4 million in purchase orders, and has a sales and pilot pipeline worth $47 million in annual recurring revenue from companies that represent 39% of the global vegetable seed market, claims the startup.
While hot water and chemical seed treatments are effective at tackling pathogens, they can also reduce germination rates, says the firm, which uses ionized gases to disinfect seeds instead.
“You can choose between killing the contaminant, and in so doing harm the germination of the seed, or you can make sure you have vigorous seeds, but not be able to kill everything,” claims CEO Dan White, who cofounded Clean Crop Technologies in 2019 with plasma tech expert Dr. Kevin Keener and former Cargill executive Daniel Cavanaugh.
“We started out looking at post-harvest applications and we’ve done a lot of work on mycotoxin mold reduction, but for the next several years, we’ve decided to focus exclusively on seeds,” White told AgFunderNews.
“In 2023, we built out our first commercial system, and now we have a piece of commercial hardware that’s at scale for vegetable seeds. We have a tolling line, which is pretty typical for seed treatments, so customers send us the seed, and we treat [decontaminate] it [with ionized gases] in our class 7 cleanroom for a flat rate per pound. We then package it aseptically and send it back.”
Depending on the seed type and customer requirements, speeds range widely “from a few pounds to over a hundred pounds per hour per machine,” said White. “But we are building the machines for modularity, allowing us to match line speeds of hundreds of pounds per hour with multiple machines in parallel.”