North Carolina-based Elo Life Systems has closed a $24.5 million Series A round to accelerate the development of a natural high-intensity sweetener ‘inspired by monk fruit,’ and Cavendish bananas engineered to resist the devastating Fusarium wilt fungal disease threatening global banana production.
The financing was led by existing investors including AccelR8, Novo Holdings and DCVC Bio, and will enable Elo’s partner Dole to start field trials for the disease-resistant bananas in Honduras and advance work on the sweetener with a view to market entry in 2025 reports agfundernews.com
“This disease is steadily marching across growing regions… it destroyed all the Asian production and then the Middle East and now we’re seeing it in Peru, Venezuela, Colombia, the last holdouts in terms of production territories for Dole and other banana producers.”