Public Funding for Glaia Ltd

In the UK we have recently experienced fresh food shortages leading to empty shelves in supermarkets evidencing the fragility of the UK's food supply chain and the high reliance on horticultural imports. Domestic production of most soft fruit and vegetables is under controlled environment agriculture (CEA). However, high operating costs make CEA largely non-competitive with imports. Increasing farming outputs could hold the solution to making CEA more competitive. However, crops are not nutrient limited anymore and none of the available technologies can tackle what is now considered the main bottleneck in agricultural productivity: the photosynthetic inefficiency of crops. Glaia has developed a carbon-based material improves the efficiency of the light harvesting processes in plants resulting in increases in crop yields of up to 20% with no extra nitrogen or energy inputs. And because photosynthesis relies entirely on green resources (sunlight, water, and CO2) this increase in yield comes with a reduction of CO2 emissions per tonne of produce. This new technology is the active ingredient of our biostimulants, is completely compatible with current farming practices and can be applied as part of irrigation systems, or _via_ foliar application. The aim of this project is to validate the commercial viability of Glaia's photosynthetic enhancement technology by engaging in large scale trials in commercial farms. Glaia's disruptive technology offers to the growers a unique tool to increase crop productivity beyond the current photosynthetic limit and significantly improve the profitability of their operations, while at the same time lowering their emissions. Glaia's technology will be the catalyst to boosts domestic production of soft fruit and vegetables and reduce the dependency on imported produce.

We have a proprietary technology developed at the University of Bristol that is capable of boosting plant biomass production, but more importantly, also crop yields by ~20%. Our product is a sugar-derived material that interacts with the plant's photosynthetic machinery, increasing the efficiency of the conversion of absorbed sunlight into biomass, i.e. photosynthesis. Our product is benign, readily bioavailable to the plants and cost-effective in the production. The product can be up-taken by the plants either via the roots, from where it is transported by the plants' own transportation system into the leaves. Alternatively, the uptake can take place directly at the leaves, when applied as a spray.