Picketa Raises $2.1M to Put Plant Tissue Analysis in Farmers' Hands

Fertilizer prices have jumped since the Strait of Hormuz closure and the Iran conflict. Every pound of nitrogen costs more. Fredericton-based Picketa just closed a $2.1 million seed round to help farmers stop wasting what they apply.

Picketa's device, the Leaf Evaluated Nutrient System (LENS), does plant tissue analysis in the field. Instead of sending samples to a lab and waiting weeks, a farmer gets results on the spot. The system compares the readings against a database built from thousands of plants at different growth stages. The company says it can cut in-season fertilizer spending by up to 20%.

“It’s a very tough time to be a farmer,” CEO Xavier Hébert-Couturier told Betakit. “A lot of the new chemistry is going into micronutrients and biologicals, which people don’t really know how to use, or when to use, or when to apply. This is why the interest is so high; instead of putting on more nitrogen, the next yield gain is going to be from saving what you don’t need to apply.”

The simple read: a hardware sale. The better read: the database is the moat. Every tissue test feeds the model, making the next prediction more accurate. That network effect is hard to replicate. Picketa started with potatoes, then added corn, canola, soybeans, and wheat – crops that cover a big chunk of North American acreage. The device is now in 45 agriculture retailers. User count has quadrupled in two years. More than 1,000 farms across most of Canada and 16 U.S. states use it, Hébert-Couturier said.