BioConsortia, an agricultural biotechnology company that uses a proprietary Accelerated Microbe Selection (AMS) process to assess the beneficial microbial consortia for crop improvement, will be coming out of stealth mode on Monday. The company, currently headqaurtered in Davis, California, will sell its microbe solution as a treatment for crop seeds and soil additives.

The launch of the product has been backed by a $15 million investment from venture capitalists Kholsa Ventures and Otter Capital. As a trend, venture capitalists have shown particular interest in the agriculture industry, especially since farms are facing pressure to produce more crops on the same amount of land to deal with increase in demand.

Andrew Chung, a partner at Kholsa Ventures, spoke about the companies recent investment. “At Khosla Ventures, we’re investing in companies that can have a systemic impact on food production around the world…Since providing the seed investment in the BioConsortia technology, we’ve been strong believers in the opportunity to dramatically increase agricultural production with smaller resource requirements. This R&D platform will accelerate innovation in agriculture and enable the industry to operate in even more environmentally sensitive ways.”

About BioConsortia, Inc.

BioConsortia, based in Davis, California, is an agricultural biotechnology company that uses a proprietary method for the selection of beneficial microbial consortia for crop improvement. The company has pipeline products and research projects for: enhanced utilization and substitution of N, P, K and S fertilizers; plant growth improvement including harvestable yield, root mass and accelerated development; other desirable crop traits such as abiotic tolerance, biotic resistance and enhanced metabolite expression. BioConsortia will partner with crop protection, seed and plant breeding companies to bring the benefits of microbial science and biotechnology to sustainable crop production. For more information visit www.bioconsortia.com

About Khosla Ventures

Khosla Ventures offers venture assistance, strategic advice and capital to entrepreneurs. The firm helps entrepreneurs extend the potential of their ideas in breakthrough technologies in clean energy, mobile, IT, cloud, big data, storage, health, food, agriculture and semiconductors. Vinod Khosla founded the firm in 2004 and was formerly a General Partner at Kleiner Perkins and founder of Sun Microsystems. Khosla Ventures is based in Menlo Park, California. More information is available at http://www.khoslaventures.com.

About Otter Capital

Otter Capital is a private equity investment firm based in Palo Alto, California. Otter invests in a wide variety of industries, including agriculture and sustainability. John Pasquesi founded the firm in 2001 and was formerly managing director and member of the executive committee of Hellman & Friedman, a San Francisco based private equity firm.

(Image Credit: Rex Turgano)