Full-Time
Commercial Potato Breeder
Ohalo
51-200 employees
Seed-based accelerated crop breeding platform
No salary listed
No H1B Sponsorship
Aptos, CA, USA
In Person
 Biology & Biotech (2) |
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- Master’s degree or higher in Agronomy, Plant Science, Horticulture, Crop Science, or a related field.
- 5+ years of direct experience in potato variety development, agronomy, or commercial seed systems.
- Hands-on experience designing and managing field trials across multiple environments.
- Familiarity with production-scale constraints and process control (sampling plans, SOP validation, QC thresholds).
- Strong understanding of potato production systems, grower needs, and commercial success factors.
- Excellent communication skills. Ability to interpret agronomic and performance data and translate it into commercial insights.
- Comfortable working in a fast-moving, fluid, collaborative, and innovative environment.
- Willingness to travel as needed to trial sites and partner locations. Travel amount will vary depending on activities for the timing of the year i.e. planting, harvesting, etc. (10%-50%).
- Highly motivated with a strong drive to meet company objectives.
- Comfortable utilizing technological advancements, including AI and similar methodologies, to drive continuous improvement in alignment with company strategy.
- Innovative, proactive, and strategic thinker with a confident and humble approach to collaboration and problem-solving.
- Lead late-stage variety development activities for potato programs, including multi-location field trials and pre-commercial evaluations that align with the Ohalo commercial go-to-market strategy.
- Design, execute, and analyze regional and on-farm trials to validate performance, stability, and agronomic fit.
- Serve as the technical bridge between R&D, product, and commercial teams, translating data into clear deliverables.
- Own the product registration & UPOV process in a global landscape.
- Partner with growers, processors, and other external collaborators to support trial execution and feedback to support and drive commercial sales and vision.
- Collect, synthesize, and communicate trial results to internal stakeholders in a clear, actionable way.
- Evaluate varieties against commercial benchmarks (yield, quality, disease resistance, storage, processing traits, etc.).
- Provide technical input into variety positioning, launch planning, and market segmentation as it aligns with our commercial organization.
- Support continuous improvement of Ohalo’s variety development and evaluation processes.
- Direct experience supporting commercial launches of new potato varieties.
- Familiarity with seed multiplication systems and grower adoption dynamics, in particular relating to the potato industry.
- Experience working with processors &/or fresh market channels.
- Exposure to advanced breeding technologies or biotech-enabled crop development.
Ohalo Genetics develops seeds using Boosted Breeding, a method that makes plants pass on their entire genome to offspring, enabling asexual reproduction through seeds. How it works: by altering the reproductive process, the offspring are genetically identical to the parent, producing true seeds that carry the full parent genome. This allows rapid development of new crop varieties with desirable traits, shortening breeding cycles from about 10–12 years to only a few years. What sets it apart: it targets a wide range of crops (potatoes, corn, berries) and collaborates with other agricultural companies to develop and commercialize new varieties, focusing on predictable, genotype-stable outcomes. What the company aims to achieve: increase crop productivity and resilience to changing environmental conditions, helping improve the food supply chain by delivering better-yielding, more reliable crops.
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
Late Stage VC
Total Funding
$100M
Headquarters
Seacliff, California
Founded
2019
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- True potato seed cuts breeding cycles from 12 years to 2, boosting yields over 20%.
- Strawberry resistance to neopestalotiopsis enters trials in 2025 via UF/IFAS partnership.
- Boosted platform applies to nearly every crop, enabling stackable traits and rapid trait development.
What critics are saying
- Syngenta/Monsanto leverage existing seed infrastructure against true potato seed in 12–18 months.
- USDA APHIS plant pest approval may reverse if polyploidy yields decline in 6–12 months.
- Strawberry neopestalotiopsis resistance may fail in 2025 trials, collapsing UF/IFAS partnership.
What makes Ohalo unique
- Uses proteins to suppress meiotic recombination, enabling plants to pass entire genomes to offspring.
- Creates genetically uniform true seeds for crops traditionally propagated vegetatively, like potatoes.
- Delivers predictable heterosis with 50–100% yield gains by stacking all beneficial parental traits.
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Growth & Insights and Company News
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↑ 0%APTOS, Calif., Dec. 20, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Ohalo Genetics, Inc. has entered into a groundbreaking Development & Commercialization Agreement with the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, Florida Foundation Seed Producers, Inc., and the Florida Strawberry Growers Association (FSGA) to address the significant threat of neopestalotiopsis to the strawberry industry.This fungal disease, which can wipe out entire strawberry fields, has become one of the most damaging issues faced by Florida strawberry growers, affecting crop yields, increasing production costs and threatening the livelihood of farmers in a state known as the "Winter Strawberry Capital of the United States".Neopestalotiopsis was first detected in Florida in 2017, with notable outbreaks in subsequent years. By 2019 and 2020, the disease had become widespread and severely damaged the crop across the state.Currently, there are no commercially available public strawberry varieties resistant to neopestalotiopsis. Growers have relied on fungicides and rigorous field management practices to mitigate the disease's effects, but these methods come with increased costs and limited effectiveness.In response to this challenge, Ohalo® leveraged its advanced breeding technology platform with genetic resources from UF/IFAS to develop a novel trait that makes a strawberry plant resistant to neopestalotiopsis and integrated that trait into existing University of Florida strawberry varieties. These new, resistant varieties will enter non-commercial, experimental trials in 2025."This collaboration showcases the power of public-private partnerships in solving critical agricultural challenges," said Jud Ward, CTO of Ohalo
Dave Friedberg, CEO of Ohalo, has unveiled a 'boosted breeding' technology that ensures offspring inherit all beneficial traits from both parent plants, potentially revolutionizing crop breeding. This method, which prevents the random splitting of genes, has shown to significantly increase yields. Ohalo, founded in 2019, has raised over $100 million in funding. Friedberg was inspired by Dr. Jud Ward's work at Driscoll’s and officially set up Ohalo in late summer 2019.
Vinod Khosla and Dave Friedberg struck a largely positive note on stage at the World Agri-Tech and Future Food-Tech conferences in San Francisco last week despite the ongoing funding winter.While AgFunder reported a 49.2% decline in agrifoodtech funding in 2023 and many startups face the abyss this year without a fresh influx of capital, money is always available for exceptional founders with disruptive products or technologies, insisted Dave Friedberg, CEO at investment group The Production Board (TPB) during a panel debate with Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla last Tuesday.“Exceptional founders have nothing to worry about,” said Friedberg. “But being a founder doesn’t give you the privilege of being able to raise money. And so that’s a fundamental truth that everyone’s going to get hit in the head with at some point. You can’t blame the market.”“That is so true,” agreed Khosla. “There are so many me-too kinds of startups. In fact, what I would argue is what the market has done is separated the really good startups from the not so good… Markets go up and down and you have to roll with the punches.”Vinod Khosla on cultivated meat: ‘We’ve probably looked at two dozen business plans, and not one made economic sense’Khosla, who highlighted his firm’s investments in Nitricity (on-farm nitrogen), Leaft (Rubisco protein), Impossible Foods (plant-based meat), Vertical Oceans (high-tech shrimp farming), Climate Corp (ag data), and Blue River (ag robotics) over the years, said: “I don’t think there are any areas I would say we’ve pulled back from
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