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Our REP™ can develop more resilient, sustainable & profitable crops for industries that critically need it. And we do it with a fraction of the cost and time than other approaches.
About
Avalo's “Rapid Evolution Platform™” evolves plants the way nature has for millennia (through high-diversity genetic recombination) but uses Interpretable Machine Learning to do this at unprecedented speed and scale. This means we can find complex, nature-based genetic solutions within a crop variety, and commercialize it in a few years (instead of decades). All without the need for costly GMOs.
Key Benefits
By creating better breakthroughs with less resources, Avalo accelerates the transition to a more sustainable and equitable agricultural system.
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First - it drastically reduces the amount of time it takes to bring improved crop varieties to market. Traditionally, it takes the industry 8-12 years to introduce a new variety. AI can do this in ½ the time. And with global agriculture facing pressure from a changing climate and growing population – the pace of innovation is huge. Our solutions have to outpace our problems, and by increasing the speed of evolution we can create much needed resilience into our food and fiber systems.
Second - new varieties can be produced at a fraction of the cost of traditional breeding programs. And less cost of innovation means…more innovation! So rather than developing one cotton variety for multiple markets, breeders can develop different varieties that are evolved for the unique challenges of being hyper-specific. For example, our new Avalo Cotton variety is specifically evolved for the increasingly hot, arid conditions in the Texas Plains – allowing it to thrive without any added irrigation and far less fertilizer. Regionally adapted varieties also make it possible to shorten supply chains by making more plants possible in more places.
Finally - it allows for “multi-modal” trait development. Most breeding programs focus on developing one trait at a time. But because the AI allows breeders to look at the whole genome (and all the interactions between genes) we can select for more complex concepts like "profitability” which includes balancing attributes like yield, inputs, fiber quality and more. This ability to shape multiple traits at once is where this approach will be able to reshape the fashion world. It means being able to design crops with the whole supply chain in mind. New cotton varieties deliver high fiber quality with fewer inputs (win for farmers) and create up to a 30%* reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (win for brands, people and planet). And this ability to include farmers, gins, spinners, mills and producer needs into the “sustainable innovation” process delivers the value needed to stimulate mass adoption.
Applications
While we want to entirely evolve supply chains and deliver value to all parties along them, our primary focus is on Farmers and Producers.
- Farmers are facing unprecedented challenges of rising inputs costs and increasingly unpredictable growing conditions. This is a crisis that is putting the future of agriculture in jeopardy in regions across the world. Avalo is working to create regionally adapted crops that increase profitability for farmers while also putting less pressure on their land and the ecosystems on which they rely.
- Producers have made ambitious 2040 climate goals, but have faced challenges in meeting them, particularly Scope 3 goals, which are largely out of their control. By developing crops that produce more with less, we can address scope 3 emissions from the very start of the supply chain, helping brand meet their carbon goals and create more sustainable products for customers.