Fortissimo Capital is a leading private equity fund in Israel investing primarily in maturing technology and industrial companies. Since our formation in 2004, we have raised $2.7 billion across six funds and have invested in over 60 companies. Current investors include several large international financial institutions, including banks, insurance companies and pension funds. Our unique, proactive approach to private equity investments empowers us to think out of the box to achieve the seemingly impossible, and build long-term, sustainable growth.

Fortissimo Capital

Innovation Industries is a venture capital firm that invests in hightech, medtech and agri-foodtech companies in The Netherlands Innovation Industries maintains a hands-on management style, sharing its experience, knowledge and connections with the entrepreneurs. Portfolio companies are actively supported in order to strengthen the value proposition, improve the time-to- market, identify and realize global strategic partnerships and avoid the typical start-up pitfalls. Innovation Industries sees itself as a partner of the entrepreneurs and the other parties involved; a creator of ventures, rather than merely a financial investor. Innovation Industries focuses primarily on start-ups but will also be able to invest into scale-ups. With this relatively broad spectrum of funding capabilities, emerging breakthroughs in research and technology can be sustained by sufficient venture capital to optimize their chances of success and ultimately provide returns to the Fund’s investors. Once these companies are established with seed funding, the Fund will be able to continue financing the advancement of these businesses and technologies.

Innovation Industries

Solynta

Solynta is a breeding and biotechnology company based in Wageningen, the Netherlands – the home town of one of the leading agricultural research institutions in the world. The company develops and applies new breeding technologies to convert potatoes into a hybrid crop. Hybrid potato varieties with superior traits and performance are being generated at a speed that is vastly greater than what can be achieved by traditional breeding. In addition, hybrid potatoes will allow sexual seed propagation, greatly enhancing the speed of product developments and providing tremendous logistical and phytosanitary advantages to the potato industry.

<div><p>Solynta develops hybrid potato varieties with superior traits and performance at a faster pace than traditional breeding. It produces clean, disease-free hybrid true potato seeds that can be stored for years. New varieties using hybrid true potato seeds can be boosted to commercial quantities 500x faster than traditional methods, while targeted hybrid breeding for pest and disease resistance can reduce chemical usage. Moreover, hybrid breeding can speed up the release of better adapted varieties with climate changes. Headquartered in Wageningen, Netherlands, the company is privately held with operations in the UK.</p></div>

Enhancing seed and crop traits via biotechnology

Crop Biotech

Bayer partners Solynta to distribute true potato seeds in India, Kenya

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    Solynta develops hybrid potato varieties with superior traits and performance at a faster pace than traditional breeding. It produces clean, disease-free hybrid true potato seeds that can be stored for years. New varieties using hybrid true potato seeds can be boosted to commercial quantities 500x faster than traditional methods, while targeted hybrid breeding for pest and disease resistance can reduce chemical usage. Moreover, hybrid breeding can speed up the release of better adapted varieties with climate changes. Headquartered in Wageningen, Netherlands, the company is privately held with operations in the UK.
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<p><span>Lone Star Industrial Materials is a cultivation company that manufactures raw hemp materials. Its product portfolio consists of bast fiber, refined cellulose, and hemp hurd, seeds, hearts, fines and oil. Additionally, it offers retail products such as HempSorb, animal bedding, and hemp control socks. Hemp requires less land, improves nutritional health, is environmentally friendly, helps soil regeneration, grows in various climates, absorbs a great deal of CO2, is a rotational crop and reduces waste. Hemp is used in construction, insulation, bioplastics, and as hemp wood. The privately held company has developed an end-to-end supply chain from seed genetics to delivery.</span></p>

Lone Star Industrial Materials

<p><span>PLANTeDIT operates in the plant genome editing field to produce improved crop species through transformation technology and a CRISPR/Cas9 delivery system. It produces regulatory-free, consumer-oriented, DNA-free and sustainable genome edited crops and biopharmaceuticals. The company’s offering includes non-transgenic high oleic soya, which is produced by mutating the FAD2 gene, which eventually increases the oleic oil content in the soya bean. This product was developed through a collaboration between PLANTeDIT and ToolGen. The organization has also collaborated with RebelBio, University College Cork and IAPB. Headquartered in Cork, Ireland, PLANTeDIT is privately held.</span></p>

PLANTEDIT

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    Amforo is a biotech company that focuses on developing foods that are high in protein by enhancing the nutritional density of food and feed crops through the platform of technologies it has built. The company offers a family of feed and food crops, including primary ingredients for suppliers of plant-based meat and dairy alternatives. In addition, it is focused on developing a low-cost, plant-based source of protein for farmed seafood. Moreover, Amforo is pursuing approaches to enhance the nutritional profile of crops as well as their protein content, which entails optimizing amino acid profiles, modifying carbohydrates, and enhancing micronutrients.
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Amfora

<p><span>BioHeuris provides weed management solutions by combining synthetic biology and gene editing to develop herbicide resistant crops. Its offering includes Heurik, a technology platform that integrates rational design and directed evolution to identify mutations that confer herbicide tolerance, while Swap is the platform that introduces these mutations in crops using gene editing. The company cultivates soybeans, sorghum, rice, cotton, and alfalfa. It has partnered with Santa Rosa Semillas, Adecoagro, Gensus, GDM, Aceleradora Litoral, Tobin, Rotam, Asociación de Cooperativas Argentinas, Benson Hill, and Plant Science Center. Headquartered in Rosario, Argentina, BioHeuris is privately held with an office in the US.</span></p>

BioHeuris

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    Tropic Biosciences is a privately held developer of high-performing commercial varieties of tropical crops that promote cultivation efficiencies, improve sustainable environmental practices and enhance consumer health through its use of cutting-edge genetic editing technologies. Its GEiGS Technology combines gene editing and RNAi in a single platform that enables critical disease resistance and quality improvement traits. The technology caters to the banana production, row crops, livestock, and poultry industries. The company’s partners include Temasek, Agronomics, Polaris Founders Capital, and Excellence Through Stewardship. Headquartered in the UK, Tropical Biosciences has been featured in The Telegraph, Nature, Fast Company, and the Financial Times. 
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Tropic Biosciences

Companies that develop or use biological, physical and chemical agents and techniques to provide protection and improve the quality of a seed. This includes the sale of seed coating, or seed enhancement products as methods to treat seeds.

Companies that redesign large clusters of genes and gene parts rather than modifying or engineering a single gene for improving the traits of a plant.

Companies that utilize genetic engineering tools and technologies to use existing and naturally present gene variants in a plant and the natural process of breeding such as inbreeding, and linebreeding to develop better traits for plants.

Companies that use transgenesis processes like tissue culturing to develop transgenic plants or seeds by inserting new genes into them from other plants or in certain instances other organisms like bacteria or even animals.

Companies that offer techniques such as epigenetics, RNA interference (RNAi) to temporarily block a specific gene that would trigger unwanted effect such as a disease on a plant.

Companies that develop a platform to insert, edit, or delete the DNA of a plant itself using approaches such as CRISPR-Cas 9, TALENs, and Zinc Fingers. These approaches help develop plant genes or seeds with traits such as disease-resistant, enhanced-performance, or improve yield.

Biotech solutions to produce crops that are sustainable and offer better traits

Offers customization of genes and traits as required by farmers

Uses AI/machine learning to facilitate their platform/biotech processes like gene editing

Solynta

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