WATERLOO, ON, April 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- ALORA, a pioneer in developing ocean agriculture to create a more sustainable future, today unveiled its new company brand and announced a first-of-its-kind innovation: salt-tolerant rice plants. Founded in 2019 as Agrisea, the company – now known as ALORA – will build on this milestone by commercialising salt-tolerant land varieties to enable restoration of land agriculture in the most salt-damaged regions on Earth. To further that endeavour, ALORA also announced $1.4 million in seed funding from investors including Toyota Ventures and Mistletoe.
Leveraging its revolutionary salt-tolerant technology, ALORA is starting with rice ocean agriculture, and has plans to expand into other crops, including grains, leafy greens, and herbs, whilst simultaneously adopting technologies to harness the energy of the oceans and the potential of the 3D water column for food production.
From an idea to reality
Since 2019, ALORA has been developing oceanic level salt-tolerant agriculture to solve world hunger. By understanding the capability of marine organisms to thrive in salt environments, it has solved the first step in this million-year mystery by developing the world's first truly salt-tolerant rice plants. These plants are thriving with high yields at salt levels of 12g/L and show an upper tolerance of 16g/L (ocean is 28-32g/L). ALORA's salt-tolerant rice varieties are outcompeting all other known alternatives. The company's first land agriculture plot will be in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam, and ALORA is now seeking partners for saline land agriculture.
The ALORA team was able to create expression in a dormant set of genes using their unique patent-pending editing technology. These selected genes create a pattern of effect responsible for ALORA's advanced salt-tolerant mechanism, allowing our plants to thrive in high salt environment. The company's top-performing genes increased in expression by 338,000x, 568,000x, and 2,500,000x compared to the unedited plants, activating a strong, reliable salt tolerance mechanism. With this incredible leap in salt-tolerance technology, ALORA has identified the path to allow their plants to grow in oceanic level salt, unlocking that oceanic tolerance level. Luke Young, CEO and Co-Founder of ALORA, said: "With ALORA, we thrive on the responsibility of being pioneers in our field. We will work with the transformative power of ocean agriculture to help humanity in the fight against climate change as we end world hunger.".
Building a Global Network
Toyota Ventures brings a wealth of experience and knowledge across industries and will be instrumental in introducing ALORA to a global community of innovators and customers. "ALORAs innovative approach to cultivating salt-tolerant crops is a game-changing trifecta that addresses the key issues related to climate change and the production of food, namely the release of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere (specifically methane), food security and land usage, as well as water conservation," said Lisa Coca, Climate Fund partner at Toyota Ventures. "This three-pronged approach is absolutely critical in evolving towards a sustainable future of food, and we look forward to supporting the Alora team in their journey."
The collective impact community at Mistletoe Singapore, a fund co-owned by Taizo Son and the Singaporean arm Managing Director Atsushi Taira, is also an invaluable resource that will help ALORA accelerate its mission.
About ALORA:
ALORA's mission is to build a future where having enough food each day is no longer a luxury, but a basic right for every person, no matter where they are. Agriculture, itself, is suffering from sea-level rise, increased soil salinity, and farming methods that damage our environment. With the next world crisis likely to be a battle over freshwater, there is a lot that needs to change in how we grow our food.
ALORA was built to solve world hunger, and has evolved to create the sustainable future of food. We are the Ocean Agriculture company. We have developed a way to grow crops in high-salt conditions, such as salt soils in the Mekong Delta, or on our floating platforms in ocean saltwater.
