Post by BIOKET Bioeconomy Key Enabling Technologies platform

💡 Can light be the missing variable in plant cell culture? Two startups just secured funding to find out. Ayana Bio (US) and Brevel (Israel) have been awarded a $1.25m grant from Israel's BIRD Foundation to test whether Brevel's "illuminated fermentation" technology can boost the production of high-value botanicals grown via plant cell culture. ➡️ The idea: use light as an elicitor to drive plant cells to generate more secondary metabolites and to scale that process up to commercially relevant volumes. ➡️ The players: Ayana Bio, a 2021 spinoff from Ginkgo Bioworks, grows high-value botanicals from plant cell lines in bioreactors bypassing the supply-chain risks of traditional agriculture. ➡️ The tech: Brevel pioneered a single-process method combining sugar-based "dark" fermentation with LED lighting, designed to retrofit standard fermentation tanks or build new lighted ones. ➡️ The focus: Across 100+ plant cell lines developed over four years, Ayana Bio is concentrating on sage (for rosmarinic acid), saffron (for crocins) and marigold (for zeaxanthin and lutein) with sage on track for commercial scale as a natural preservative alternative in 2026. ➡️ The bet: Light has been an underused lever because there were no scalable options for large tanks. Brevel's technology aims to change that. "The BIRD grant will allow us to do the research on our plant cell lines to find out if using light is a variable that will improve plant cell production." - Frank Jaksch, CEO, Ayana Bio The scale-up hurdle remains the industry's biggest challenge, but with more plant cell culture players getting funded, commercial-scale proof points may be on the horizon. 🔗 Read the full story via AgFunderNews: https://lnkd.in/dGBEYZSM Ayana Bio, Brevel, Ginkgo Bioworks, BIRD Foundation, Yonatan Golan, Frank Jaksch, Weesle Glenn, Ena Cratsenburg, Mica Sheppard, Emily Auker, Troy Rhonemus, Alex Shandrovsky, Jim Hamilton, Katherine Seriacki, Maxwell Lloyd, Matan Golan, Adi Vagman, Rona Galezer, Amir Levi, Ido Golan, Inbar Shalev, Jonathan Azoulay, Shlomit Peled, Limor Nakar-Vincent, Tal Kelem, Andrea Yonah, Omer Carmel