Launched in August with $30 million in seed funding from German biochemicals major Bayer and Singapore sovereign fund Temasek, the US company Unfold is charged with creating vegetable varieties that “deliver optimized quality and sensory experience.” It has only been a few months since Unfold was unveiled, but the team has been busy getting the global business up and running amid the difficult conditions brought about by Covid-19.
"From the varietal standpoint, we’re still early days. We’re doing lots of probing, testing, and trialling, trying to find [the right] varieties. But at the crop level, we have a more defined set that we are working with – leafy crops, lettuce and spinach — and also moving into tomato, [bell] pepper, and cucumber, three fruiting crops," says CEO John Purcell in an interview with Agfundernews.com.
"I think this will be really critical to expand the crop base. Leafy crops are great, but they’re not the whole salad! [The fruiting crops] are more differentiable at consumer level, there’s a large focus on the sensory experience. I think vertical has advantage over high-tech glass[house] here because you can control the environment and select and enhance those consumer traits, and get them every day of the year."