You might think an iceberg lettuce is an iceberg lettuce. But not so.
“It takes about 30 varieties a year to provide our customers a 12-month schedule of lettuce to harvest,” said Mike Vanoli, founder of California-based Pinnacle Seed, a company that specializes in producing and selling lettuce and leafy green seeds. “The diseases come on faster than we can keep up with through our traditional breeding mechanisms.”
Pinnacle uses traditional plant breeding — a scientific process that involves intentionally altering the genetic makeup of plants to enhance desirable traits — combined with genetic technology to produce high-yielding leafy greens, including iceberg and romaine.
The company sells those unique seed varieties to growers throughout California and Arizona.
“Our job is to increase yield and lower cost so that our growers have a safe, nutritious, cost-effective business model,” he said.
It’s in pursuit of that aim that he’s marrying his traditional method of producing new varieties, with the more advanced technologies offered by Verinomics, a New Haven-based biotech company.
Gio Scalzo
“Mike and his team bring really good foundational baseline genetics to the plate, the understanding of how to breed better varieties,” said Gio Scalzo, Verinomics’ chief operating officer. “We use a technology layer to make those genetics better and introduce them to market faster.”
Verinomics’ technology works in two ways. Its platform, called Genova, uses AI to identify certain genes within a given lettuce variety and gives recommendations for ways that traditional breeding can speed up improvements — what the company calls genomic-assisted breeding.
The other component uses Verinomics’ gene-editing process called Genesis.
It involves going into the genome of a plant variety to make a precise edit without introducing any foreign DNA, to improve certain desirable characteristics.
Genesis and Genova were first unveiled by the company in March of this year.
“Both of those two things can function to accomplish the same goal, which is better varieties that can help the farmer, the processor and the consumer,” said Scalzo.
In fact, the company, which was founded in 2016 and employs 18 people, says it can achieve crop improvements in just a couple of years that would take decades with conventional breeding techniques.
That ability has helped Verinomics attract outside capital. It’s raised $13 million to date, from investors including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Science Foundation and Fulcrum Global Capital.
Verinomics was founded by Stephen Dellaporta, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Yale University.
A researcher monitors early-stage plants in Verinomics' tissue culture lab.
In May, Pinnacle and Verinomics announced a five-year collaboration deal that aims to develop next-generation leafy green varieties with enhanced disease resistance and improved yield to address challenges currently facing agricultural growers and the entire supply chain.
The commercial launch of initial disease-resistant leafy green varieties developed by the partnership is expected in 2026.
“The pressures on agriculture are growing,” said Scalzo. “The disease pressure, the labor shortages, the supply chain issues are growing. There are also more demands from consumers in terms of wanting healthier produce with good shelf life.”
Sharing IP
Verinomics’ gene-editing techniques are aimed at addressing those challenges with the goal of keeping produce affordable to the consumer.
“Once we have those markers, and once we have those edited plants, we hand those back off to Mike to actually field test, generate seed and then ultimately sell to his clients,” Scalzo said.
Pinnacle’s Vanoli says that by working with growers in California and Arizona, he sees firsthand the challenges faced by farmers.
“When we get into situations where the yields drop because we may have a disease, that drives the cost up because you’re not getting your units per acre,” he said.
The two companies hope their partnership will generate new seed varieties that they will jointly own.
“That’s different than a lot of other genomics and gene-editing crop companies in the space that want to own the entire supply chain,” said Scalzo. “We feel that jointly sharing in the IP actually gives both organizations skin in that intellectual property so that it can actually scale and get to market faster.”
Verinomics describes itself as advancing agriculture through strategic collaborations. It is also in partnership with Burchell Nursery, a leading almond grower in the U.S., developing new almond varieties that are expected to be in production in 2027.
The partnerships include research payments to support development work — a key revenue stream for Verinomics — along with royalties once the products enter commercial production.
Scalzo, a California native, came on board in 2023, moving from a position as director of technology and innovation at carrot grower Bolthouse Farms, also based in the west.
A move to New Haven might seem counterintuitive for a career in agriculture, but Scalzo says Verinomics is doing something crucial for the industry.
“There is an incredible talent pool that comes out of the biotech sector in New Haven,” he said. “That world-class genomic research and talent is critical, and the biotech sector being in New Haven is instrumental for our development.”
