Leading European AgriFood Accelerator StartLife announces partnership with Corteva Agriscience

European AgriFoodTech Accelerator StartLife has announced its strategic collaboration with Corteva Agriscience, a global leader in crop protection and seed technologies.

The partnership marks an important milestone for AgriFoodTech advancement, enabling solutions through open innovation and creating a bridge between the hundreds of startups in the StartLife ecosystem and Corteva.

In practical terms, this collaboration will foster knowledge sharing between corporate players, startups, and investors aligned in their mission to deliver positive change in the AgriFood value chain.

Today, StartLife’s global innovation ecosystem includes hundreds of startups from all over the world in the AgriFoodTech space, as well as notable VC and corporate partners such as Astanor, Anterra Capital, The YieldLab, and Rabobank. As one of the first accelerators globally dedicated to AgriFoodTech solutions, StartLife has been operating since 2010 and closely collaborates with its co-founder, world leading Wageningen University & Research.

Corteva has been promoting innovative solutions in the European agricultural landscape since its inception in 2018. Three years later, it opened an integrated R&D center in Eshbach (Germany), followed by the launch of its first Applied Seed Technology Center in Europe, the CSAT, a year later.

Corteva recently introduced Corteva Catalyst, a platform dedicated to investment and partnership aimed at accessing and commercializing agricultural innovations aligned with the company's R&D goals, fostering value generation and positive impact. Corteva Catalyst collaborates with entrepreneurs and innovators to expedite the advancement of pioneering technologies in their early stages, facilitating farmers' ability to produce food and fostering the resilience of the food system.

″Corteva is a global leader in agriculture that brings to market innovations in biotechnology, advanced crop protection systems and seed technologies that improve the lives of farmers, communities and consumers around the world,’’ explained Laura Thissen, Interim Managing Director of StartLife. "By leveraging the company’s research and development pipeline, startups affiliated with StartLife will gain precious insights and support to inform and accelerate their path to market and ability to scale breakthrough technologies into real-world commercial applications."

″StartLife has been a pioneer in promoting global innovation in the AgriFood technology space, helping grow a host of successful startups that went on to drive impact in their application markets,″ shared Tom Greene, who leads Corteva Catalyst. ″We look forward to collaborating with StartLife to connect to early-stage startups that align with our research priorities.″

Corteva will also be a partner at StartLife’s upcoming F&A Next summit, one of the most important AgriFoodTech events globally, that will take place in Wageningen on the 22nd and 23rd of May 2024. Startups interested in working with Corteva can contact StartLife to learn more about collaboration opportunities.