By Grace Kim

Swedish crop-genetics startup OlsAro has closed a €5 million ($5.5 million) seed round to scale its SeedAX platform and push its salt-tolerant wheat toward a commercial launch in 2027. Industrifonden and Nordic Foodtech VC co-led the round. Future Food Fund, PINC (Paulig Group), AgFunder and GU Ventures also participated, lifting cumulative funding to €7.5 million ($8.3 million).

The company will use the cash to accelerate commercial work, open new programs on drought tolerance and nitrogen-use efficiency, and expand into other cereals, including rice.

What convinced the investors?

Industrifonden investment manager Sara Frykstrand Ångström pointed to trial data and existing seed-company deals: "What convinced us about OlsAro was the scientific work behind the company, together with its field-trial results and existing seed-company partnerships. With SeedAX, OlsAro has the opportunity to turn this into a scalable platform for seed companies looking to develop climate-resilient varieties across multiple traits and markets."

Salinity affects roughly a tenth of global cropland, while heat and drought compound pressure on cereal yields. CEO Elén Faxö says wheat has few salt-tolerant options on the market despite heavy research investment in rice.

"We're seeing a steady reduction in the amount of cultivatable land due to soil salinity, which can mean lower yields or at worst no growth at all," Faxö said. "This higher salinity is in part due to flooding and cyclones, but also due to the lack of freshwater, where farmers have been irrigating with saline water or brackish water, so it's a huge addressable market."

How big are the yield claims?

OlsAro's first product, salinity-resilient wheat, delivered an up-to-41% yield increase over a moderately salt-tolerant variety under saline conditions in Bangladesh. The figure comes from company-run field trials, not harvested commercial results — a distinction buyers and analysts should hold onto until 2027 launch data lands.

The varieties target soils of 4–8 deciSiemens per meter and up to 10 dS/m. "That range runs from moderately to strongly saline soils, where conventional wheat starts losing a lot of its yield," Faxö said. "It's also where a large share of salt-affected farmland sits, so even moderate gains there can bring land back into productive use."

Where are the trials running?

Advanced trials of the salt-tolerant wheat are underway in Kenya and Pakistan. Salt and heat tolerance field trials run in Egypt, Italy, Canada and Australia. In Bangladesh, OlsAro works with Lal Teer Seed, the country's largest private biotech and seed company, targeting the 2027 launch. About one million hectares in Bangladesh are salt-affected.

In India, DCM Shriram — the largest player in proprietary wheat seeds there — has trialed OlsAro lines in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. "India is a market with significant potential for us, where we have ongoing collaborations, including field trials of our climate-resilient wheat," Faxö said, citing close to seven million hectares of salt-affected soils and rising heat stress.

Because OlsAro develops its commercial varieties without genetic modification, it can enter these markets without GM regulatory hurdles.

What sits inside SeedAX?

The company runs two development paths. The first, a population-based approach using EMS mutagenesis, treats seeds to introduce high genetic diversity, then screens the resulting populations for commercial lines. "The advantage is that it's non-GM globally, so we can target any market without being considered GM," Faxö said.

The second path is gene editing. For trait discovery, OlsAro uses AI to screen single nucleotide polymorphisms of interest, then integrates the trait via gene editing or the population approach into local elite varieties. The AI draws on proprietary field, genomic and transcriptomic data layered on open-source datasets.

Faxö frames the round as a shift from proof to platform: "We have spent years proving that we can identify and develop genetics that perform under some of the conditions putting the greatest pressure on agriculture. This round is about turning that capability into a platform that seed companies can use repeatedly."

Trials across seven-plus markets and the Lal Teer partnership will now test whether the 41% trial figure holds at commercial scale by 2027.