Rhizocore are a biotechnology company that uses the sustainable solution of native fungi to accelerate woodland regeneration, improve forest productivity, and increase natural capital benefits.
Beneath almost every forest floor lies a network of fungi that helps trees by supplying essential nutrients through their roots. However, when trees are felled, these fungi quickly die and replanting in these areas becomes more challenging. Planting sites, such as old agricultural sites, reclaimed mining land or heather moorlands where trees have been absent for a long time, also tend to lack natural populations of fungi.
The company’s technology works by providing saplings with specific ectomycorrhizal fungi. Drawing on one of the world's largest living fungal libraries, Rhizocore selects the precise, high-performance species for a given site to create their RhizoPellets™. By introducing a RhizoPellet™ into the soil alongside a young sapling, these fungi form a symbiotic network with the roots, helping trees absorb more nutrients and water. This is especially important in the vulnerable early stages of a tree's life, underpinning survival, resilience and growth to deliver financial returns on forest assets.
Plantings using RhizoPellets™ have delivered unprecedented results. Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS), for example, found that treated trees have shown a 97% survival rate compared to just 78% for untreated saplings, a relative 25% improvement.
And at a site owned by Trees for Life, one of the UK's leading native woodland restoration charities, Downy Birch saplings grew thirteen times faster than control and fertilised trees after 12 months.
Rhizocore are a startup from the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute and Deep Science Venture’s Food & Agriculture Science Transformer (FAST) programme in 2021. Old College Capital (OCC), the University of Edinburgh’s in-house investment fund, supported the company with OCC Launch investment at the earliest stages of Rhizocore’s development, and have continued to invest as they have scaled. They set up premises and are still based at the University’s Roslin Innovation Centre and now operate across more than 100 active field sites.
Next steps for the company are to scale its innovative approach to forestry and woodland restoration globally and leverage the sophisticated fungal biotech platform and deep expertise to expand beyond land into water, developing mycoremediation species to clear our waterways and remove toxins.
In order to do this, Rhizocore has secured £4.5 million in investment from a consortium led by First Thirty, a specialist investor in technologies to improve soil health. They also have funding from Scottish Enterprise, as well as from existing customer The Grosvenor Estate, one of the UK’s largest landowners and Old College Capital.
