Monsanto Growth Ventures (MGV), which acts as agribusiness Monsanto’s corporate venturing arm, has formally disclosed the companies in its portfolio.
MGV is stage-agnostic, investing from seed to later-stage in developers of technology related to the pharmaceutical, chemical or consumer sectors. It said it led or co-led all but two of the 11 investments it has made in startups.
The unit’s digital agriculture portfolio includes US-based land management software provider AgSolver; Blue River Technology, the US-based developer of software that organises weeding and herbicide application; US-based irrigation recommendation platform HydroBio and Estonia-based farm management system developer Vital Fields.
MGV has funded two companies developing agricultural productivity technology, investing in Arvegenix, a US-based startup modifying field pennycress into a cover, energy and feed crop, and Nimbus-Ceres, a US-based agricultural fungicide joint venture with biotechnology company Nimbus Therapeutics.
Other portfolio companies include US-based biological chemical product developers Preceres, AgBiome, RaNA Therapeutics and PivotBio, and Plant Response Biotech, a Spain-based startup working on products and microbes to improve crop yield and health.