Amatera says its plant cell screening approach can reduce the time and expense of developing new crop varieties by selecting promising lines at the plant cell culture stage before regenerating them into full plants.
Founded in 2022 by CEO Omar Dekkiche and CTO Lucie Kriegshauser, PhD, the company began by inducing spontaneous genetic variation in perennial crops to build large libraries of non-GMO cell lines. These lines are sequenced and screened at high throughput for specific traits. The same automated workflow can be applied to cell lines produced through other methods, including gene editing, with selected candidates later regenerated and tested in nurseries and fields, according to the company.
“The standard approach is to regenerate plants first and then genotype,” Dekkiche said in an interview at the World Agri-Tech event in London. “We isolate single cells, grow them in culture, identify lines of interest, and only then regenerate those into plants. This removes the screening bottleneck.”
Plant cell screening targets early, high-throughput selection
Amatera frames breeding as a numbers game in which thousands of plants may be needed to find a few with the right markers from crosses, edits, or mutations. Screening entire plants requires labor-intensive cultivation and tissue culture. By moving selection to the single-cell stage, the firm aims to avoid time and resources spent on cell lines that will not advance.
Dekkiche said the reason this is not widely practiced is the complexity of cultivating single plant cells and the need for automation and robotics to handle them at scale. Amatera says it has patented a pipeline that enables microculture of individual plant cells in isolation, integrated with automated screening.
Following high-throughput screening at the cellular level, only the most promising candidates are regenerated. The firm is compiling lab data on savings but expects at least fivefold cost reductions and a twofold time reduction compared with conventional methods.
Trait focus and technical limits
The approach targets traits that can be identified through known genetic markers or measurable cellular metabolism. Dekkiche noted that metabolites such as caffeine can be assessed in cells, while complex traits like drought tolerance or yield are not yet reliably selectable at the cell stage. The company is developing additional screening methods to expand the range of traits that can be detected without clear markers.
Initial crops: coffee and grapes
Amatera began with coffee and later added grapes. In coffee, programs include naturally caffeine-free varieties and a line referred to as Robustica that aims to deliver Arabica-like quality with Robusta resilience. In grapes, efforts focus on resistance to downy and powdery mildew, which the company says are major challenges for European vineyards.
According to Dekkiche, the team has identified new genes linked to coffee quality and is validating these findings. For caffeine-free coffee, the company is progressing with both known and newly discovered genes it considers better suited to the targeted variety.
Path to partnerships and industrialization
Amatera says it plans to expand into annual staple crops and partner with seed companies. While no partnerships have been announced, Dekkiche said progress is underway and updates are expected in the coming months.
The company raised a seed round earlier this year to industrialize its platform by integrating cell biology with robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence into an end-to-end device that can autonomously run plant cell workflows. Amatera also secured a place in the European Innovation Council Accelerator program in June to support this effort.
Similar high-throughput biological screening efforts are also emerging in photosynthesis research, including work where Rubisco variants are screened to engineer faster photosynthesis, highlighting a broader push to accelerate plant science innovation.