Like other countries in the Middle East, Morocco also suffers greatly from the climate crisis, which has a meaningful effect on its harvest season.

In its press release last week, UM6P Ventures announced it has made an investment in Climate Crop Ltd. that specializes in the use of gene editing technology to enhance the potential of plants to harness more energy, store more carbon, produce higher yields. UM6P Ventures is the investment arm of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, and was founded as a vehicle for the university to advance entrepreneurship and accelerate scientific innovation in Morocco and Africa, backed by the OCP Group.

As published in Agfundernews, ClimateCrop - an Israeli startup, is trying to leverage its genetic editing technology to increase the yield potential of Morocco's main crops, such as tomatoes and potatoes. Yehuda Bornstein, CEO and founder of ClimateCrop shared that his expectation is that the extensive scientific support system that UM6P has, in addition to the capital investment, will help ClimateCrop maintain its foot hold in the gene editing food market and positively impact crop production and the world’s food supply". The access to UM6P University's research and development facilities, will help ClimateCrop increase its technological maturity from the laboratory to a large-scale prototype. Moreover, the startup will have access to Africa's ag-tech and food-tech ecosystem and local and international VCs and ecosystem partners.

"The climate crop solution will improve food production, increase the supply of grain and industrial materials, while improving their carbon sequestration, and help mitigate the impact of climate change on agriculture," stated UM6P Ventures in its press release.

In the same week, UM6P Ventures also invested in a second startup - Akorn Technology, that tackles the food waste problem, the full cost of which is estimated at about $2.6 trillion. Akorn does it by producing a shelf-life extender for fresh produce in the form of clean-label, vegetable protein-based, edible coatings.