Japanese agtech startup Culta wants to take its AI-driven breeding and branded-produce model beyond Asia, with talks under way in Australia, the United States and Europe. The company is targeting ¥30 billion ($195 million) in revenue by 2032.

Culta was founded in 2017 by Shuhei Noaki. It develops its own fruit varieties, licenses them to 36 contract growers who receive agronomic support, buys back 100% of the crop and sells the branded fruit to customers in Japan and Southeast Asia. "We're applying the kind of vertically integrated business models developed by Zespri and Discroll's," Noaki said.

The breeding side uses AI and machine learning to link genomic data with the physical traits of plants and pick the most promising parents to cross — without gene editing or genetic modification. Culta pairs that with rapid cycles in controlled indoor environments, running three strawberry breeding cycles a year against one outdoors in Japan. Data from its growers' fields feeds a variety database Noaki says is "extremely difficult to replicate". The company claims cycles at least five times faster than conventional breeding, cutting strawberry development from about ten years to two.

Strawberries were the first target because Japanese fruit is prized for sweetness but hotter springs have been shortening the season: growers who once shipped from December to June now struggle to sell past April. Culta's first variety, SAKURA DROPS, tolerates early-spring heat and ships until June, with yields 1.4 times and Brix (sugar content) 1.3 times those of the leading Japanese cultivar Benihoppe. It is 1.4 times firmer, so fully ripe fruit can travel and hold quality for more than ten days. It retails at S$20 ($16) a pack in high-end shops in Singapore and Malaysia.

Newer releases include white strawberries with better sweetness, yield and disease resistance for China and Southeast Asia, where white fruit sells in the premium gift market but has lagged red varieties on taste. "The buyers at supermarkets in Southeast Asian countries say these are the best-tasting white strawberries in the world," Noaki said.

Culta began breeding table grapes and apples last year and aims to launch varieties in both by 2030, with coffee and cacao programmes in the pipeline. Hot summers are interfering with grape colouring in Japan and apple production is getting harder even in the north; the company is trialling indoor growing of fruit trees to compress their breeding cycles. It is also four years into a heat-tolerant hops project with Kirin. Noaki explained why the firm has not turned to gene editing despite having the expertise in-house: traits such as yield and Brix involve many genes rather than one target, and strawberries are octoploid, which makes them "difficult to edit".

The company closed a ¥700 million ($4.5 million) pre-Series A round in April. Its next test, Noaki said, is whether a model built in Asia works in the US and Europe, which have large strawberry markets but a very different taste from the sweet Japanese fruit. Production in Australia is planned to increase supply to Asian buyers.

Source: AgFunderNews