Plant stressor sensor Treetoscope has raised $7M USD in a seed fundraising round. The IoT device gives farmers information when using drip irrigation, helping them automate precise water and fertilizer use when the plants are hungry and thirsty. The tech can automate drip irrigation by applying AI and sensors to understand plant water needs real time. Investment will be applied towards expanding company sales and R&D.
Treetoscope’s technology gives insight and automation to the amount of water and fertilizer to give to plants and trees, reducing wasted water and efficiently managing plant nutrient levels. Environmentalists tend to support organic agriculture with a push to regenerative farming practices where no pesticides or soil-enhancing fertilizers are used at all. But that’s in a more perfect world.
Israel, where Treetoscope was born, is the home to the inventor of modern-day drip irrigation Simcha Blass. Drip irrigation applies long plastic pipes incised with tiny holes throughout a farm. There are variations on the way it is applied, but this is the most common method. The pressure in the pipes administers water only at the root or base area of the plant to avoid unnecessary evaporation and loss of water. In general this technology is very primitive, much like plumbing is today, with the majority of applications using timers to turn the water on only at night when the plants can best absorb it.
In the last 15 years or so dozens if not hundreds of companies from Israel have emerged looking to take on parts of the equation to make every drop of water, fertilizer and pesticide count. Fertigation is the term often used in the industry.
With areas like the Dead Sea shrinking because of fertlizer harvesting, and countries like China looking for intensive agricultural solutions to feed a growing in affluence population, solutions like Treetoscope will be more and more in demand.
In areas of the United States where climate change makes farming areas of almond farms impossible due to ongoing droughts, Israel-made sensor tech might save the day.
Some solutions like the wildly successful CropX operate in the same space as Treetoscope and my company Flux was operating in the cannabis and hydroponics space in this niche (see Future Crop $30M investment), quite likely too early for only a infant market for hydroponics 10 years ago. Back then investors told me hydroponics sensors and AI was a “nice” to have solution but more like a vitamin than a bandaid, as goes their analogy.
Covid changed thinking, supply chains and investments as the need for local food sources that don’t depend on the political climates of other countries such as the Ukraine and Russia. InFarm, a team of Israelis, were heralding in the golden era of hydroponics but focusing on a consumer model. They raised almost $200M to expand into grocery stores but then had to lay off over half their staff by December last year.
The investment in Treetoscope fortifies the more sober area of conventional farming and it was led by Champel Capital venture capital fund, a leading European-Israeli fund focusing on impact technology investments. Other strategic investors include Leon Recanati’s GlenRock fund, SeedIL, YYM-Ventures, and previous fundraising investors, as per their press announcement.
This builds on $3M USD already raised which includes grants from the Israel Innovation Authority from the Offices of the Chief Scientist and BIRD, a joint Israel-US government fund which funds medicine and hightech ventures between Israel and the United States.
Treetoscope is currently operating in in North America and Europe via collaborations with such leading enterprises as The Toro Company, Netafim, and Hektas, with 20 employees in total. Treetoscope’s manpower includes 20 employees in Israel and internationally.
“Humanity is currently facing one of its greatest challenges – a lack of freshwater resources,” says Dotan Eshet, CEO of Treetoscope. “Today, 70% of the world’s freshwater consumption is used by the agricultural sector, with this consumption expected to increase by approximately 60% by 2025.”
Through the technology Treetoscope has developed, according to them farmers can save approximately 30% in irrigation expenses, increase the yield, as well as the weighted profit of the farmers in Europe and the US, by ~$32 billion per year.
“Treetoscope has developed a unique solution to one of the most painful problems in the worldwide food chain, where fresh water is becoming a rare, expensive commodity,” says Amir Weitman, managing partner at Champel Capital. “We are proud to help the company make solutions available to farmers to save significant amounts of water and create a genuine impact in the world.”
About Champel Capital
Champel Capital is a venture capital fund that invests in Israeli startups in the realms of foodtech, agritech, medtech, industry 4.0, fintech and traffic. To date, the fund has made 21 investments, yielding 4 exits and 1 unicorn – Lemonade. Champel Capital is headed by partners Amir Weitman and Arié Benguigui, who have been investing in the Israeli venture capital scene since 2017. The advisory committee is Eyal Waldman, Omer Moav, Raoul Bino, Eyal Orion and Hillel Fuld.
