Terramera leads project to transform health of Canadian crops

Terramera knows a lot about growth, and not just because it develops technology that improves crop yields.

Since founding in 2010, the Vancouver-based company has raised more than $100 million CAD  from investors, which has helped Terramera grow to more than 135 employees and counting while developing its Actigate targeted performance technology, aimed at reducing global synthetic pesticide loads by 80 per cent and increasing global farm productivity by 20 per cent by 2030.  

Joining forces with Canada’s Digital Technology Supercluster was “an acknowledgment of the great work that B.C. businesses are doing in the digital tech sector,” says Dr. Steve Slater, Terramera’s Vice President of Strategic Initiatives. “It is an opportunity to advance our sustainable agriculture technologies to be truly transformational.”

The Digital Supercluster co-investment has also allowed the company to pursue genomics technology “much earlier than would have been possible otherwise, and in a more thorough way,” Slater says. “Through genomics, we are working to combat leaf rust, a devastating fungal disease that attacks small grains such as wheat, a crop that Canada exports in vast quantities.”

The collaboration fueled by the Supercluster is already paying off. As Terramera launches its own Supercluster project, which will apply computational chemistry to fungicide development, it is working with new tech sector and academic partners. “The Supercluster has been instrumental in helping us identify and form these new partnerships, which in turn have allowed us to expand the scope of our work,” Slater says.