NEW YORK – Computomics, a bioinformatics firm specializing in predictive crop breeding technology, said Thursday that it has sold minority stakes to BASF Venture Capital and to Amathaon Capital. The size of the investment was not disclosed.
Tübingen, Germany-based Computomics said that it would apply the funding to expand global strategic and technical sales and marketing as well as its R&D activities. In a joint statement, BASF, Amathaon, and Computomics also said that the investment would support the European Union's Green Deal by helping agricultural companies develop crops that are resilient to climate change and that would reduce the need for fertilizers and pesticides.
"It is already apparent that climate change is leading to a geographical shift in arable land and crop varieties. One reason is that agricultural productivity becomes increasingly sensitive with rising temperatures," Borris Förster, managing director of Amathaon, said in a statement. "Computomics has developed a key technology to bring high-performance varieties that will withstand future climatic conditions to the market faster and more economically."
Computomics spun out of the University of Tübingen and the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in 2012. It raised a €500,000 ($580,000) seed round in 2015.