Israeli biotech companies work to recreate conditions needed to grow cacao and coffee beans

[00:00:00]Would you like a chocolate?

[00:00:01]>> Oh, thank you. Nine out of 10 people in the world have a sweet tooth [music] for chocolate.

[00:00:07]>> My mom always said, "Life was like a box of chocolates.

[00:00:12]You never know what you're going to get."

[00:00:14]>> However, cacao faces the risk of extinction. [music] By 2050, more than 50% of the cacao farmland will be unfit for production [music] due to climate change.

[00:00:24]>> Though the 5,000-year-old bean originated in the Amazon rainforest and called by tribes the food of the gods, >> [music] >> in modern times Western Africa has produced around 80% of the global supply.

[00:00:39]Rainforests are running dry at alarming rates and the long stale journey of shipping and processing is leaving consumers bitter.

[00:00:48]>> The problem in the way it's growing today that a lot of those goodies are diluted in the way cacao is processed.

[00:00:56]It's really losing a lot of those bioactives.

[00:01:02]>> Innovative Israeli startup Cocmoto is trying to regenerate the bean while tantalizing our taste buds.

[00:01:08]>> Instead of growing the cacao tree nature for six or seven years and at the end [music] using only the bean, we are saying we don't need to do that. We can do local production. You can put the Cocmoto plant [music] anywhere in the world outside of the equator, very close in proximity to the factories that are already producing.

[00:01:27]>> Pluristem one of the largest platforms in the world for cell expansion. We just know how to expand cells. This is what we know to do.

[00:01:34]>> [music] >> Here at the Haifa-based biotech company Pluristem, these bioreactors mimic the environmental conditions of nature.

[00:01:43][music] >> It's like All right, so this is like science class.

[00:01:47]>> We put the cells in this vessel and then there there's actually perfusion of media. Media is the food that the cells need in order to eat. Like wheat, we are feeding the cells with this conditioned media.

[00:01:58]>> The same goes with coffee. Coffee sci is another startup where this patented cell expansion [music] technology is also picking up where nature leaves off.

[00:02:08]>> Our process in terms of sustainability is a much more efficient comparing to standard farming, standard [music] agriculture. Uh where you need huge amount of water.

[00:02:18]And by the way, every single espresso that you drink requires 140 L of water. What we are developing is a solution >> [music] >> that uh allows to manufacture coffee in a way that [music] bypasses all the challenges.

[00:02:35]>> The existing long energy consuming process is also draining our bank accounts.

[00:02:40]>> This increase dramatically the demand, the overall demand for coffee. And on the supply side, [music] we have issues that are becoming worse and worse. So, demand goes up, supply go down. Coffee is a commodity [music] that is traded in the stock market. Actually, over the past 5 years, you see a huge big increase in prices as [music] well as high volatility.

[00:03:05]>> Now, our cups can runneth over every 3 weeks.

[00:03:09]>> From a single system >> Yeah.

[00:03:11]>> per year we will be able to produce the amount of coffee that is equivalent to over half a million coffee plants.

[00:03:18]This is our product. This is a cell-based, dried cell-based coffee.

[00:03:23]>> Mhm.

[00:03:24]>> What you see here is a kind of a powder [music] shape.

[00:03:26]>> Mhm. Coffee sci roasts and brews are a taster's choice, and the proof is in our morning cup of joe.

[00:03:34]Yeah, it smells [music] different.

[00:03:35]>> Different. Yeah.

[00:03:37]>> It's a sweeter.

[00:03:38]>> Yeah.

[00:03:38]>> Sweeter smell?

[00:03:39]>> Correct.

[00:03:41]You have it.

[00:03:41]>> My nose is working.

[00:03:44]>> [laughter] >> What's more, it [music] helps evaporate the carbon footprint on our planet.

[00:03:49]>> One of the things that we have been asked is, are you going is your technology going to replace our conventional and existing >> [music] >> coffee farms and farmers and agriculture and the answer is absolutely no.