Startup Alley

Eighth Day Foods is an Australian alternative-protein company producing plant based lupin-based protein LURPREME. Made from unprocessed sweet lupins, it’s a rich source of protein, fibre and other nutrients. It can be used to make a variety of meat alternatives making it highly versatile.

By removing the need for complex processing and applying our patented fermentation technology we create a whole, healthy, ready-to-cook protein. The seed-to-final product pathway is all done in one process removing the complexity, risk and cost to the manufacturer, the consumer and to the planet.

Globally, farmers are under increasing pressure to be more sustainable, efficient and secure. However, much of the time they are without the financial and technical resources to do so. Our mission is to provide the digital infrastructure for corporates, financiers and consumers to invest in farmers and share the responsibility of meeting sustainability targets along agri-supply chains.

We believe data can be a key to unlocking the value in sustainability and through integrations and standard formats, Geora is able to support our customers to be leaders as sustainable agribusinesses and connect farmers in real-time with investors and credit marketplaces.

LYRO Robotics is an Australian early-stage company focused on post-harvest packing of fresh fruit and vegetables. We develop, design and deploy robots that solve labour shortages by providing consistent, reliable throughput to packing operations.

Our LR-1 robot can pick up to 1,000 pieces of fruit per hour, equivalent to 40 trays each containing 20 pieces of fruit—roughly the throughput of an experienced human packer.

The difference is that LR-1 will pack for 24 hours straight if fruit is available for packing.

Nanobubble Agritech build systems that put extremely high concentrations of oxygen gas into irrigation water, significantly increasing plant growth rate and yield.

Pastoral trials at Massey University showed Nanobubble Agritech’s system delivered double the production compared to conventional irrigation over six months, when retrofitted to an existing pivot irrigator.

With water availability being the key limiting factor to expanding agricultural production globally, this technology has the potential to dramatically increase the world’s food production. A range of commercial scale trials are currently underway and system patents have been lodged.

For Nanobubble Agritech, the sky is the limit.

The Leaf Protein Co. is unlocking Earth’s most abundant source of protein, leaf protein, to solve the lack of biodiversity in the available plant protein ingredient market. We’ve developed technology to extract photosynthetic proteins from the hundreds of thousands of edible plants that have been cultivated for food.

Using this technology, our mission is to build a library of functional leaf protein ingredients that are highly digestible, allergen-free and sustainable, enabling food companies and manufacturers to create the next generation of more nutritious and tastier plant-based foods.

Athena IR-Tech informs farmers if and when their crops need water so they can best optimise irrigation practices.

The Athena IR-Tech Transp-IR solution maximises water use efficiency through proximal, infrared transpiration monitoring and notifies the grower when the crops transpiration rate has dropped below the optimal level for the current growing stage therefore giving the plant only the water it needs to efficiently develop its crop.

Transp-IR leverages years of research about how drought and heat stress impact crop photosynthesis and layers it with a defined optimal irrigation zone for each crop to maximise water use efficiency without compromising yield or quality.

Beewise provides robotic beehives to support bees in the face of climate change, allowing for superior pollination and dramatically improved honey yields. The newly designed hives include precision robotics, computer vision and AI. To date, Beewise has saved over 124 million bees with less than 1,000 devices in the field.

Beewise is not changing how beekeeping is done, instead, they are simply applying it in real-time with a robotic arm vs a human one. This offers farmers a superior pollination solution by guaranteeing the delivery of quality pollination on time and at market prices.

CropX provides an affordable and scalable farm management solution integrating both above and below ground data to optimise resources and results. Our models constantly adapt to the crop’s growth stage and changing environmental conditions to provide crop-specific recommendations.

Planning and reporting tools allow growers to use detailed maps to record, monitor and schedule farm activities from their phone, tablet or computer. With thousands of data points, growers can be alerted to everything from burst pipes and irrigation needs to early-stage field variability and pest risks.

VineSignal, by Deep Planet, delivers confidence to growers and winemakers to make informed decisions by centralising the key viticultural data points that impact decision making throughout the growing season to harvest planning.

Our solution can reduce variability and disease by tracking daily, weekly and monthly changes in vegetation (NDVI). Our unique two-week prediction delivers and accuracy of 93% to see the future impact of irrigation and fertiliser application on individual vineyards.

InvertiGro enables businesses to tackle food security and sustainability challenges by breaking down barriers to entry for vertical farming.

Our innovative Indoor Vertical Farming solutions address the industry’s key challenges of cost and complexity whilst also delivering unparalleled flexibility and scalability, enabling businesses to become highly efficient and sustainable farmers almost anywhere and at any scale.

The combination of unique, patented hardware, proprietary software and supporting services delivers a fully integrated plug-and-play solution for growers and multiple revenue streams for InvertiGro.

Naio Technologies has been delivering agricultural robotic solutions in close collaboration with farmers since 2011. Our robots Oz, Orio, Ted and Jo function autonomously, are versatile and are 100% electric. They cultivate the soil between and under a row as well as being adaptable and carry a wide range of tools.

Weeding robots assist both the environment and people by providing a solution to assist farmers in their daily work, reducing a strenuous physical workload and limiting the use of chemical weedkillers.

Fruit picking is traditionally done entirely by hand which is time-consuming and expensive, and impacted by frequent labour shortages. Human pickers also damage about 5–15% of their harvest, which cuts an apple’s value by a factor of 10. To tackle this, Ripe Robotics design, build and operate robots that pick apples and stone fruit for commercial orchards.

Artificial intelligence has advanced sufficiently to detect and assess outdoor fruit better than humans, making robotic picking finally feasible. Data collected can also be analysed for disease, damage, yield estimates, and much more. Over time the hardware can be upgraded to do pruning, thinning, and precision spraying, leading to fully automated agriculture.

The management and optimisation of on-farm water use are one of Australian agriculture's biggest challenges. Agbot's™ cutting-edge technology is unlocking the power of remote monitoring at a price point and scales never seen before. Based in Brisbane, Queensland, Agbot™ is committed to helping farmers understand and optimise water use, and diesel and liquid fertiliser levels right across their farms, efficiently and cost-effectively. All of our devices are proudly designed and manufactured in QLD, Australia.

Agronomeye develops digital twin technology to help farmers make informed and educated decisions about the use of their property.

Our Digital Foundation and AgTwin™ platform offers access to highly detailed maps and models of farms, helping land owners and managers understand what’s going on across their property, in real time, so they can make better decisions.

Focusing on clearly identifying risks and opportunities across the landscape ensures our customers focus their attention on long term meaningful value— – from both a production and environmental perspective.

In a world where we need to increase food production by as much as 70% by 2050, Bee Innovative’s technology will be a game-changer for food security and the global agricultural sector.

Bee Innovative is revolutionising the centuries-old practice of commercial pollination to protect and unlock the natural superpower of precision pollination. With more than 30 years’ experience, the ground-breaking technology gives growers a real-time insight into how well bees are pollinating a crop, enabling interventions that boost yield, quality and profitability.

BioScout provides a real-time disease tracking solution for farmers and agronomists who want to minimise their losses due to airborne fungal diseases. BioScout's solution is made up of an integrated hardware and software platform that uses ground-based data and AI to track and analyse the spread of airborne diseases.

Our technologies will enable remote auditing, remote inspection, and continuous verification opportunities across the global red meat supply chain as well as addressing similar opportunities in other meat processing sectors such as pork, poultry, aquaculture, and dairy processing.

Building on its extensive biosecurity inspection simulation training heritage, Bondi Labs is developing a suite of complementary smart digital technologies—ranging from a proprietary smart glass-based augmented reality (AR) inspection solution through to an automated computer vision compliance monitoring platform.

BirdSol Pty Ltd is an innovative global AgTech company with a patented and novel avian deterrent and wildlife management technology based on an integrated AI system called Cherrp®.

Cherrp® is an AI-powered, bird deterrent solution, which recognises birds by species, communicates to them in their own languages, moving them away from protected locations to alternate feeding sites.

Positive outcomes achieved by Cherrp® include reduced cost of avian damage, enabling increased agricultural yield and contributing positively to global food security.

Demand Side Instruments (DSI) provides unique end-to-end IoT solutions for farmers to better manage resource use in the field. We create agronomic tools and mobile apps to help manage resources and attempt to address the consequences of climate change.

Our agro-weather sensors and actuators monitor and control the growth of crops, mainly through management of irrigation. The Aliaterra app is a user-friendly application through which the farmer can monitor different aspects of the land, react appropriately to alerts and anomalies or simply set the system to function in an automation mode.

There are already over 100 active clients benefiting from Aliaterra in their daily farm management.

Downforce Technologies bring transparency, consistency and accuracy to the measurement of natural capital assets. Our pioneering data services platform bridges the data gap between national policies and on-the-ground implementation of nature-based solutions to achieve global Net Zero and Biodiversity Net Gain goals. Their ground-breaking and actionable insights help land stewards, financial institutions, global corporations and policymakers design and implement relevant scalable interventions and monitor progress over time.

Research on agro-ecology and land management practices show that healthy soils are vital for improving overall resilience, biodiversity and ecosystem services such as water quality, carbon sequestration and pollination. Downforce Technologies provide data services for Soil Organic Carbon – a critical soil health indicator. The team are expanding these services to include water, nutrients and biodiversity.

FarmLab reduces the cost and complexity of measuring natural capital with our cloud-based platform and mobile app, helping farmers meet their sustainability targets and make better environmental management decisions.

From soil sampling for fertiliser budgets to developing carbon offset projects, we’re able to help you analyse your environmental data through effective sampling and digital soil mapping techniques. All of this helps farmers build a detailed picture of their soil and support project planning, soil management and fertiliser application.

Gaia Project Australia’s (GPA) leafy green Intelligent Cultivation Crop Modular (ICCM) technology is suitable for all controlled environment agriculture farms and doubles the yields of any farm that adopts the technology while halving labour and electricity inputs.

The ICCM adapts to plant growth, keeping plant densities high throughout the crop cycle. The planting channels increase yields by 100%, maximising outputs while minimising inputs. We are the first to harness bi-directional cultivation methods, reinventing crop cultivation to secure the urban food supply chain—with a potential pathway to build profitable farms that can withstand climate change.

Human quality control in fresh food is subjective, often resulting in disagreement and dispute. GoMicro’s aim is to put the power of AI assessment in the hands of farmers, buyers, fruit ripeners, transporters and ultimately consumers.

Quality control that has traditionally been assessed by eye can now be managed using AI on a mobile phone and the GoMicro device. We make it possible to assess quality all along the agrifood supply chain from farm to fork and help reduce food waste through accurate assessment of freshness. Our patent pending technology makes it possible to achieve high accuracy and build AI applications efficiently with a small number of AI training images.

Hillridge’s mission is to help farmers mitigate the financial impact of poor weather on their crops and livestock. We have created a platform to help farmers purchase affordable weather insurance as protection against drought, frosts, heat stress and excessive rain.

The insurance is sold by Nutrien Ag Solutions and backed by Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance. In just a few minutes, farmers can create a policy that is tailored to their operation. As soon as you buy, you are covered. If the insured weather event occurs, your payout is fixed, fast and guaranteed.

Leaf is the data infrastructure company for food and agriculture committed to empowering software developers to solve some of the world’s most pressing health, economic and environmental challenges.

Our products deliver digital infrastructure for agriculture and work in the background to enable agtech companies to scale their products. Solutions developed by Leaf power agtech products around the world, enabling them to be instantly compatible with farm data from any source.

LLEAF Pty Ltd (Luminescent Light Emitting Agricultural Films) is an Australian company specialising in the development of light spectrum shifting dyes to improve the quality of sunlight and therefore produce more food sustainably.

Internationally patented, LLEAF dyes passively shift the spectrum of sunlight to better meet the needs of plants and the goals of growers. The technology can be easily fitted to new or existing greenhouses and allows the grower to achieve higher yields and grow crops out of season.

LLEAF’s focus is on being the industry expert in sunlight optimisation and aims to consistently provide the best sunlight optimisation solutions.

Onside provides confidence to primary producers enabling them to mitigate and protect against biosecurity risks, tracking staff and service providers on-farm, protecting against OHS incidents.

Our digital toolkit app streamlines operations, communications and compliance for people managing or servicing rural properties.

The toolkit is unlocked when people “check-in” to properties via a mobile app. This simple check-in process cleverly constructs an enormous, interconnected network of movements among the agri sector which maps the spread of pests and disease and feeds powerful algorithms to optimise disease detection and response.

Growth is driven by a referral-based go-to-market model where users invite other users to the platform and accelerates us towards our vision to power the world’s biosecurity.

Optiweigh is the most significant step forward in livestock weighing in over 30 years. With built-in functionality and complete mobility, Optiweigh is the only company in the world able to efficiently capture grazing animal weight changes day-to-day in real time and direct from the paddock, delivering tangible benefits to any size cattle operation.

With no need for expensive infrastructure, fencing or animal training, an Optiweigh is as accurate as other weighing methods with none of the hassles. Monitor weight gain and drive profit, eliminate livestock stress and lost production, and reduce your time, labour cost and more.

Pairtree delivers a cutting-edge service to the Australian agriculture sector to help farmers make the most of the smart farm revolution. We turn your farm data and digital services into priceless information to help drive efficiencies and improve decision-making and confidence. Our goal is to connect every device on every farm, making the farmer’s data evergreen.

We specialise in aggregating data allowing you, for the first time, to access, visualise, compare and analyse information from different sources together. In addition to delivering detailed weather, markets and mapping, Pairtree Intelligence acts as a “data translator” to overcome incompatibility issues between your agtech devices and digital services.

Agribusiness is one of the largest industries in the world, valued at approximately $US 1.4 trillion a year. While this figure is astounding, there is an ever-expanding percentage of food loss & wastage year-in-year-out.

The main contributor to food waste is fruits and vegetables with a staggering 45% of all post-harvest produce being lost or wasted within the food supply chain. This is roughly 1.3 billion tonnes of food, which equates to $US 680 billion dollars worth of wasted produce not reaching an end consumer each year.

To combat this industry problem, PostHarvest have created the most accurate real-time ripening sensor in the world, to help monitor the health of fresh produce shipments within supply chain storage.

PPB Technology is revolutionising food testing with a novel, proprietary technology, CYBERTONGUE® that uses biosensors tailored to accurately measure the quantities of legitimate ingredients as well as contaminants.

When agricultural produce or food changes hands the receiver needs to know: Is it safe? Does it meet specifications? Often the receiver needs to decide immediately and waiting days for a lab result isn’t an option. The test takes a couple of minutes and is so easy anyone can use it.

We produce an affordable, scalable alternative farming system using precision high-voltage electricity combined with variable electric fields to stimulate plants’ internal systems to produce more at a cleaner standard and tailored to market demands.

Working with Australian Aboriginal elders of the Maiawali people, Rainstick™ observes a thousand-year-old tradition of using lightning to support the mycelial network in the soil. Rainstick integrates Indigenous knowledge systems with novel technology to address the demands of climate change, food security and a growing population.

Rubens provides the fresh fruit industry with a unique, world-first quality management technology to measure fruit maturity before and after harvest. The product is made up of sensor tools and a cloud-based analytics system. Sensors can be portable for field operations or fixed installations on packing lines, storage, and ripening rooms.

Rubens automatically predicts optimal harvest time and monitors storage and ripening conditions to manage optimal fruit state along the entire supply chain. Our technology leads to tangible, actionable insights to optimise business efficiency and improve product quality to consistently meet consumers’ expectations.

SWAN Systems is the world’s most advanced water management software. Our software and expert team of agronomists help farmers, water managers, and commercial irrigators make the most out of every drop of water. By harnessing data, the platform delivers user-friendly scheduling, tracking and reporting.

SWAN is relevant to users in all irrigation industry sectors, including intensive horticulture, irrigated cropping and public open spaces such as parks, gardens, schools and sporting grounds. Our configurable, hardware-independent water and nutrient management software helps customers make data-driven decisions about how much and when to irrigate, enabling growers to precisely apply what is needed for optimal plant growth.

TruckTracker is a mobile and web app that tracks the location of trucks when carrying livestock, sharing the data in real-time with the buyer and seller and acting as a conduit of digital information, to better manage livestock movements through the supply chain. Just like when you’ve ordered an Uber and can track it coming towards you, TruckTracker provides Livestock Producers, Transporters and Processors with assurance and peace of mind when moving livestock and delivers key efficiency gains that save time and money.

UBI is a meat grading and monitoring platform that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning, allowing meat processors to measure and document quality assurance in real time. We’ve built decision-grading software that allows meat processors to assure and document quality standards in real time. From day one, our machine-learning-powered app prevents 15% of grading errors, costing the meat industry $85 billion annually.

UBI aims to push the current boundaries of quality assurance by offering meat manufacturers and other industry stakeholders an affordable solution for the smart factories of tomorrow.

VetChip is a West Australian company dedicated to improving animal health and welfare through pioneering technology, proactive monitoring systems, data analytics, and disease detection.

Founded in 2019 by a highly experienced team of veterinarians and engineers, VetChip was created to fill a market void and solve the issue of being able to detect abnormal health parameters in animals who cannot tell us when they are unwell.

The initial idea came from veterinarian Garnett Hall, who believed animals deserved a better technological solution to health prevention than the current industry standard set by wearable collars and trackers. Along with his brother Maxwell Hall, an equine specialist surgeon, and a team of highly experienced engineers - Ross Khambatta, Zyrus Khambatta, Dilesh Wadia and Pendar Dalili, a partnership was developed to create a fully working prototype - the first of its kind in the world.

Since its inception, the company has grown significantly, garnering industry recognition, media coverage, strategic partnerships, and market validation.

The plant-based food market is primed for massive growth but highly functional and natural ingredients are in short supply. Whole. is bringing to market a proprietary technology that enables cost-effective and large-scale production of plant-based ingredients and flavours, including from produce that would otherwise be wasted.

The technology is 100% free from chemical processing, produces no waste and maintains the nutritional value of the original ingredients. Before incorporating the company in 2020, the Whole. founder team spent two years designing, developing and de-risking the underlying technology to the point that it is now ready for commercialisation.

Inadequate internet and phone connectivity remain a significant issue for Australians in rural and remote locations. Zetifi has developed new technology to solve connectivity problems in areas with little or no mobile coverage and is bringing fast and reliable connectivity to farmers that increases productivity, profitability, safety and quality of life.

Zetifi’s patented “sleepy network” technology allows their wireless network infrastructure to hibernate when not in use and only activate when required, saving up to 90% of solar and battery costs and enabling a scalable model for connecting farms and other low population density locations where existing technologies and carriers can’t reach.

Zondii unlocks the true value of food and fibre, empowering customers to buy authentic Australian-grown produce and increasing the value of Australian produce. Our technology turns a smartphone into a portable multispectral imaging scanner that captures data within specific wavelength ranges across the electromagnetic spectrum. Paired with Artificial Intelligence, Zondii can detect patterns and unique spectral signatures to classify food and fibre.

The data obtained through this imaging process is analysed by a specific algorithm for each product using our proprietary machine learning and data modelling. Within seconds, previously unknown qualities of the product are identified, such as organic status, origin and freshness.