AgTech plant health startup Croptix announces milestone investment led by Advancing Eco Agriculture (AEA)

Croptix, a precision agtech platform for in-field early detection of crop health, announces the first close of their Series Seed round led by strategic investor and regenerative agriculture leader, Advancing Eco Agriculture (AEA), with continued participation from 1855 Capital and Ben Franklin Technology Partners. With this investment, Croptix will accelerate the development and use of its patented in-field sensing technology. This disruptive platform enables the detection of crop health faster and easier than legacy practices, resulting in improved crop quality and yield providing better financial returns for farmers.

″This investment round allows us to accelerate our development and market penetration efforts,″ said Dr. Perry Edwards, Croptix co-founder and CEO. ″We’re eager to add nutrient testing to our suite of solutions for in-field assessment of crop health to our customers.″

Croptix’s platform enables predictive, data-driven farming decisions. Patented in-field sensors, along with AI analytics, proprietary cloud-based data, and mobile app, provide rapid, actionable results for farmers. Croptix's initial solution has been beneficial for citrus growers to identify early indications of Huanglongbing (HLB) citrus greening, one of the most destructive citrus plant diseases in the world. With this new investment round, Croptix is accelerating its expansion into the larger nutrient segment while continuing to add to its disease detection solutions for growers of high-value permanent crops such as apples and grapes, in addition to citrus. With AEA as a strategic partner, Croptix will scale in-field testing across a broad range of crops, both in the United States and internationally.

AEA develops systems for regenerative agriculture, supporting large-scale farmers with agronomy expertise, technologies, and specialty plant nutrition products to monitor the soil and plant system’s performance and microbiome integrity. ″Croptix’s technology will add a new dimension to the consulting and nutritional services AEA offers by providing farmers fast, data-driven analysis,″ said AEA CEO Jason Hobson. ″This technology will help farmers quickly understand potential issues related to their crops and solve nutrient deficiencies before they become a problem.″

″AEA invested in Croptix because of our confidence in the current capabilities and future potential of its innovative technology and its highly committed and talented team,″ said AEA Executive Chair Paul Bergman. ″Our mission is greatly enhanced through this partnership, as we both accelerate and broaden the support we provide farmers using regenerative practices to achieve higher returns with less risk, grow healthier and more resilient plants, and regenerate soil systems.″

Dr. Perry Edwards and Dr. Zhiwen Liu founded Croptix to translate innovative sensor technology developed by researchers at Pennsylvania State University into solutions that have a meaningful and marketable impact outside the laboratory. Their insight was taking spectrophotometer miniaturization from the benchtop to handheld devices uniquely suited for non-invasive tissue sampling. They successfully applied their combined expertise in optical engineering with their team of engineers and other scientists to develop the Croptix platform, a convenient, field-deployable solution for farmers to measure nutrition in situ and screen for crop diseases. By combining miniature spectrophotometers with big data and AI, their invention is a new industry tool to improve global food security. Croptix was awarded highly competitive National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I and Phase II grants to develop and commercialize the technology.

Croptix is grateful for the ongoing support of early investors 1855 Capital and Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Central and Northern PA as well as the new investor AEA in their ongoing $3.5M Series Seed round, demonstrating their strong commitment to and confidence in the company’s future success.

About Croptix

Croptix is a precision Ag platform for in-field early detection of crop health. Farmers can make faster, data-backed decisions to optimize yield, reduce costs, and mitigate fatal crop diseases. Field deployable sensor technology, combined with ML analytics and AI, screens for crop disease earlier and quantifies nutritional information faster than legacy tests.