Frost poses a major threat to the agriculture supply chain, costing approximately $30 billion dollars in food waste — enough food to feed 200 million people — according to estimates from New York-based start-up CryoBio, which recently raised $1.3 million in pre-seed funding.
A serial entrepreneur, Murli Manohar founded CryoBio in 2025 as a spin-out of the venture studio Marble, following his exit from biofungicide company Ascribe Bio, a company that he co-founded in 2017. Manohar started CryoBio after identifying a market whitespace for crop protection products that address frost damage.
“People do not talk about frost, [like] they talk about drought or pathogen or anything else. So, it has become a massive problem, especially [over the] last decade. The damage caused by frost has doubled, and it is expected to double again,” Manohar elaborated.
The problem comes as climate change is moving the planting season up, increasing the chances that plants will be exposed to frost, Manohar explained. Traditional means of warming fields include lighting thousands of candles in vineyards or use helicopters to push warm air down on vines, Manohar explained.
CryoBio uses a precision fermentation-derived anti-freeze molecule that coats a plant, protecting it from frost for several days up to two weeks, depending on the crop, Manohar explained. Additionally, CryoBio is working on developing a seed treatment version of its product that provides the same benefits and allows farmers to use existing equipment.
Scaling up with seed funding
CryoBio will deploy the seed funding to build the infrastructure to release a product, with a current expected release in 2028, Manohar explained. The agtech start-up received funding from AgVenture Alliance, FuzeHub, Launch NY, Marble, and NY Venture.
Successful biological products are built on a foundation of bio-manufacturing, regulatory approval, and a formulation that is proven to deliver results in the field, Manohar summarized.
“The key to success of any biological product is to validate in the field. So, this infusion of the cash that we got is directed towards preparedness to get field validation,” he elaborated.
The agtech start-up has almost 30 growers lined up in New York, Maryland, and Washington to run five-acre field trials, Manohar said. CryoBio is preparing farmers for these field trials by explaining the process of developing biologicals, including how not every bio-input will work in every field, he added.
“We are working very closely with growers. We are not bringing the data to them. We want them to test, and they bring us the data, and they tell us what we should do,” he added.
Once these field trials are complete, CryoBio will seek another round of funding to expand biomanufacturing capacity and field trials to more acres. Currently, CryoBio is producing biologicals at the gram-scale, and the next round of funding will scale the process up to kilogram level, Manohar noted.
