Brand Studio for Puna Bio
In the
2024 edition of Expoagro, the most important rural fair in Argentina, the participation of
Franco Martínez Levis (CEO of Puna Bio)
stands out
, in a panel focused on Startups, Investments and Venture Capital.
Puna Bio, an emerging company in the biotechnology sector, has captured the attention of the agricultural sector with its
innovative approach to collecting bacteria from the Puna
- a region shared by Chile, Argentina and Bolivia - to significantly improve the yield of Argentine crops.
After
an 8-month stay by its managers in Silicon Valley
, where the company benefited from advanced training and access to cutting-edge technology, Puna Bio managed to secure an investment round that has allowed the expansion of its team in Argentina.
Puna Bio, the Argentine biotechnology company applied to agriculture
On this occasion, the company presented a
product specifically designed to enhance the yield of wheat in the country,
promising to mark a before and after in Argentine agriculture.
Franco Martínez Levis expressed: "We came to Expoagro to
participate in a panel of startups and investment in venture capital
. In our case, we are a
biotechnology company applied to agriculture,
an Argentine company that was born four years ago as such, but with a research that has been going on for 20 years in the Argentine Puna, in Chile, and in Bolivia. There one of my co-founders, a researcher at Conicet, discovered that there were bacteria in these high salt flats (which constitute the highest and driest desert on the planet) that "They could help tolerate crop stress and also increase yields in productive areas"
"Four years ago we started working on growing soybeans and beans in degraded soils and then, when we saw that this worked,
we applied these bacteria in different soils.
What we did was
take these solutions to productive places
, for example, to the core zone in Argentina, to different provinces such as Tucumán, Santiago del Estero, Córdoba, Santa Fe, and Buenos Aires. We had great international recognition and they invited us to participate in IndieBio, the most important biotechnology accelerator in the world. We spent eight months in Silicon Valley accelerating our technology and raising a round of investment that we were able to bring to the country to expand the team and inaugurate a state-of-the-art laboratory based in Tucumán.
Puna Bio participated in the Expoagro conference panel
"This helped us launch
our first product, Kunza Soja
, which increases yields by approximately 11% and with a positive response rate of more than 90%. For this international recognition we were awarded as the scientific innovation worldwide in terms of sustainability at the Falling Walls Scientific Congress in Berlin in 2022".
"Today we came to Expo Agro to participate in this panel, to tell our story and to present our
new product, Kanzama for wheat
: a seed treatment also of Extremophilous bacteria, with which we provide a complete solution of natural, biological fertilization, to a crop that does not have as much development".