Ohalo Genetics
Ohalo Genetics is an American agricultural biotechnology company that develops plant breeding technologies and crop varieties. The company was incubated by The Production Board, a venture firm founded by David Friedberg, in 2019. Ohalo promotes a breeding platform it calls Boosted Breeding and works with grower groups on strawberry and potato programs in the United States.
History
Ohalo emerged from The Production Board, David Friedberg's holding company for science-focused ventures, based in the United States. The Ohalo team operated in stealth mode while building plant breeding tools, and publicly disclosed the business and its leadership in 2024.AgFunderNews reported that Ohalo raised a little over $100 million before publicly unveiling its "boosted breeding" strategy in 2024. David Friedberg stated that the funding would advance crop development programs and partnerships with seed companies.
Platform
Ohalo describes its platform as Boosted Breeding, an approach that aims to suppress meiotic recombination so that offspring inherit complete genomes from both parents. The company explains the process as creating polyploid offspring that preserve both parents' genomes, delivering predictable heterosis without traditional multi-year selection cycles. The company states that the method uses gene editing and quantitative genomics to shorten breeding cycles and combine traits across crops.Ohalo announced crop programs in strawberry and potato as part of its initial commercial roadmap. The company launched the Ohalo Strawberry Consortium in 2025 to develop flavorful strawberries and distribute improved varieties as "true seed." Company materials describe a potato initiative that focuses on "true potato seed," yield improvement, disease resistance, and direct sowing.