Skolkovo, the international tech hub under completion on the outskirts of Moscow, has begun accepting applications from startups in the agricultural business and expects its first resident companies by the end of the year. Agricultural startups will fall under the wing of the biotech cluster headed up by Skolkovo vice president Kirill Kaem, reports the Skolkovo Foundation.
Areas of research will include crop farming (creating new varieties, improving soils, precision farm technology and efficient land use, harvesting and storage); animal husbandry (cellular and genetic engineering, animal breeding, veterinary and feeding technology, and the protection of livestock); and industrial biotechnology in agriculture such as biocatalysis, metabolic engineering and the advancement of fermentation processes.
Some of the other fields of investigation include the processing and recycling of agriculture-based products (including packaging, quality control and food safety and storage); and forestry (in particular molecular marking techniques for the identification and genetic monitoring of forestry resources, controlling the origin of timber against illegal logging, waste disposal and the paper industry).
By 2020, the biomed cluster expects around 200 resident agro-startups, creating more than 1,000 jobs. The private investment in these projects over the next six years should reach 5 billion rubles, helping generate combined revenues of 7 billion rubles over that time.
From government priorities to global trends
The Russian government earlier this year identified the agricultural sector as one that requires special attention as the need for a switch toward a higher degree of self-sufficiency through import-substitution becomes more pressing.
Import substitution may be a short-term priority, but Kaem and his team have broader, more important goals.
Among the other issues impacting agriculture are climate change and the decrease in the quality and quality of fertile land, which will inevitably push food prices up further and ramp up demand for new technological solutions, perhaps with the help of innovation in the IT and robotics sector, Kaem said.
Meanwhile, the microbiology side of the agriculture business is looking like an increasingly promising area of development, according to Yuri Nikolsky, director of science at the biomed cluster.
“The development of new microbial producer strains is a traditionally strong field in Russia. Compared to other areas like plant selection, industrial microbiology has been strong and is still strong at several research centers. So it’s no surprise that the first agro residency application uploaded to the Skolkovo website came from a new microbiology startup,” he said.
“Powerful technologies such as genomic selection and genomic engineering have been around for a few years, but only recently has it become clear that they are applicable to the agriculture industry,” Nikolsky added.
Maxfield Capital, a venture fund whose main backer is Skolkovo president Viktor Vekselberg, is also showing interest in agro tech. Last month the fund invested “up to $500,000″ in OnFarm, a California-based startup which is developing a platform to manage farm hardware technologies.
This story is based on materials published by the Skolkovo Foundation.
