The greatest environmental and economic gains lie off the most well‑trodden path, according to Shirley Shahar, co-founder and general partner at Desertech Ventures, a venture builder and investment platform headquartered in Abu Dhabi.
Speaking to AgTechNavigator, Shahar pointed out that some of the most consequential challenges in food security do not get enough industry attention.
She highlighted grass as an example of an agricultural blind spot, consuming vast amounts of water while receiving little innovation or scrutiny.
“Some of the issues of food security are urgent, but some are not seen. This is where we looked for solutions. We looked at grass and saw a market that is not tackled, even though it abuses so much water.”
While the grass sector is not technically in agri-food, Shahar believes that tackling its water consumption is a major opportunity for impact.
“If we tackle grass, we impact the full water management of a city.”
Shahar said agtech innovation has become constrained by a narrow definition of what agriculture entails.
“Agritech is usually looked through a very narrow lens. There’s the usual stuff like water management on tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, leafy greens. But ag is much bigger than that… We look at the challenges that other agtech companies or solutions are not tackling, the kinds of challenges that are almost under the radar.”
Next Grass: Where the grass is greener
They company worked with Professor Asaph Aharoni from the Weizmann Institute, who used gene‑editing technology to alter grass at the genetic level.
The result is Next Grass, grass that requires significantly less water consumption and grows at a slower rate.
By lowering both irrigation needs and maintenance demands such as frequent mowing, it fundamentally lowers cost and resources in landscaping, from golf courses and football stadiums to private lawns.
Today, grass often requires mowing once a week, but the goal is to reduce growth height so that mowing is needed only once a season. The grass was also engineered to have “anti-ageing” characteristics and delayed flowering.
Shahar believes this would have a transformative effect on water savings.
“Water is a closed market. When you save water in one place, that water is simply used somewhere else. Everyone is very focused on water in specific sectors like saving water in vertical farms, using smart water management – and all of that is good, but the impact is very small. It is one solution after another, and the delta keeps shrinking. Grass is the second most cultivated plant on Earth in terms of how much we need to water it, but nobody has touched it.”
She noted that artificial turf has its own risks and negative impacts, making gene‑edited grass a more environmentally aligned alternative.
Furthermore, because grass is not a food crop, any gene‑edited varieties face fewer consumer fears and fewer regulatory concerns.
According to Shahar, the Next Grass technology has already achieved successful validation in the laboratory and is moving forward with semi-commercial pilots.
The immediate target markets are California and the United Arab Emirates, markets with high water scarcity with large grass‑maintenance industries.
It is actively seeking investment and commercial partners that can help accelerate the rollout.
