Startup from UPTEC wants to combat seed and cereal waste with innovative solution

Seedsight, a deep-tech startup incubated at UPTEC – Science and Technology Park of University of Porto, is addressing a crucial challenge for the survival of food systems: the quality, availability and accessibility of essential foods such as cereals and seeds.

Seedsight’s technology can simultaneously validate cereal characterisation information via low-cost, large-scale online biomolecular and biophysical analyses (making it possible to monitor entire shipments of cereals) using blockchain, deep learning, AI and optical sensor technologies, which leads to the optimisation of the identification of the best species, origins and suppliers of seeds and grains at the most competitive prices.

With this development, Seedsight aims to provide the agri-food chain with the necessary knowledge to improve the decision-making process in acquiring raw materials for food products, contributing to the global fight against food waste and fraud and sustainability throughout the value chain.

The Portuguese startup's models foresee a future reduction of 8% in costs related to sorting the best cereal, a reduction of up to 89% in the time to acquire the best grains, and a 20% increase in productivity in the transformation of cereals into final products (thus increasing the availability of the quantity of food with the same current resources).

In recent decades, costs associated with food raw materials such as wheat, corn, rice, oats, and quinoa have increased by between 18 and 20%. This increase is mainly due to challenges in the initial stages of the value chain, such as the inefficiency of time-consuming and expensive grain selection processes. Seedsight’s solution aims to improve production and reduce waste and economic losses.

Seedsight’s innovation enables those involved in the agricultural and food processing trade with timely information to make smarter choices in the definition and control of grains adapted to their reality through practices that contribute to increased sustainability.

Seedsight was recently selected as one of the 100 European startups highlighted by Techstars Deep Tech Berlin, which is in the acceleration process. For the executive director of the German accelerator, Martin Schilling, the Seedsight solution is vital for global food security. “Seedsight aims to increase the quality of seeds and grains, achieving an improvement of up to 10 times. In addition to being an important step for commodity trading, this process is vital for global food security, translating into a decisive value proposition for customers and investors.”

This year, it reached the Top 17 among the finalists of the ParticleX Urbantech Global Challenge 2024, an initiative focused on the Asian market. Seedsight is conducting pilot studies in collaboration with partners in Africa to detect mycotoxins as part of the Validate.Global programme, promoted by Impact Hubs Vienna, Kigali and Accra. It is also integrated into the European project EPICENTRE and was a finalist in the last cohort of the Global Entrepreneurship Center in Dusseldorf, Germany. Furthermore, the prestigious “Women in Agriculture 2023 Award” was awarded at the renowned European agri-food technology fair, AGRITECHNICA, based in Germany.

The Seedsight team includes Joana S. Paiva, CEO, Gonçalo Ramos, CCO, and Paulo Santos