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Victoria Holden, Imio:

“Many growers were looking for an organic alternative in their cloning process”

“We hear from a lot of growers that the one place where they’re unable to be organic is in their cloning process,” says Victoria Holden, who is the Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Imio and has a Ph.D. in Microbiology. Founded in 2019, the company has been developing beneficial microbes that can help remove the need for synthetic chemicals in agriculture. For their first product, Re-Gen, the company was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to develop it. Their second product, Root, was launched at the beginning of last year: a group of microbes that produce hormones that help plants grow stronger roots. “One of our customers, a cannabis grower, was having issues with their clone success rate due to a fungal pathogen. With Root, they were able to eradicate that and now have a very high successful cloning rate. Moreover, using our product decreased the amount of time that their plants need to be in the vegetative state, resulting in more grow cycles per year.”



Closed loop
The company’s first product, Re-Gen, is a group of microbes that growers add over the biomass that’s leftover from the cannabis harvest. “The microbes help degrade the leftover biomass, which can then be used as a fertilizer substitute on your next crop. Some growers like to use it as a top dressing, helping the plants to retain moisture. We’re really excited about the prospect of having this closed loop of resources used for cannabis growing,” Victoria says.

The company has also spent a lot of time developing the products from a liquid into a powder form. “This makes it a lot more environmentally friendly to send. Moreover, the product is much more shelf stable and consistent as a result.” Victoria explains that customers receive the microbes in a freeze-dried powder version. “Simply add water to the packaging, and they will come back to life. We usually recommend waiting for 4 hours for them to wake up, after which it is ready to be used.”

Expanding
For now, the products have been catered to the needs of cannabis growers. “We saw a lot of excitement from cannabis growers for our products. They were motivated to use natural products and interested to try new things,” Victoria says. But the company is currently working on testing the products on other crops as well. “We’ve had some great results with Re-Gen on corn and hay. We’re also testing Root on lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and ornamental flowers, for example. As we are a small team, we wanted to focus on just one market at first. Now that we are improving our production processes, we’re feeling ready to help other crop growers as well.”

For more information:
Imio
www.imio.co