Food Waste and The Secret Lives of Fruits, with Katherine Sizov of Strella Biotech

Macro Micro Michael Marco & Startups at the Edge (M4Edge)

Our guest today is Katherine Sizov, Founder of Strella Biotechnology. This is our third Ag-tech show in our young 2nd season. We opened with Allison Kopf of Artemis, and this episode follow Hunter McDaniel of UbiQD. There will be more; it's one of our themes this season, and is increasingly important in the age of Corona-driven changes and challenges to our economy and supply chains.
The first thing you should know is that Katherine is fresh out of college, and she founded Strella Biotechnology while she was still a student at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied molecular biology and chemistry. And by the way, she was also on the fencing team. Now to us, that’s quite impressive.

Katherine decided to tackle an issue that affects every single one of us: food waste. Did you know that over one third of produce never reaches the consumer? Add in the share that does reach, but that we find unsatisfactory, and we are wasting close to one half of the fruit and vegetables harvest. And that’s in a developed country like the US, with the best refrigeration technology and transport infrastructure. Imagine in the developing world.

If we want to address environmental sustainability and world hunger, we must reduce this waste.

To do this, Katherine tried to figure out—as she puts it—how to hack a fruit.

In this podcast, Katherine explains how fruits and vegetables talk to each other, why the expression “one rotten apple spoils the whole barrel” is actually scientifically accurate, and how Strella developed specialized biosensors to reduce food waste across the supply chain.

This is a fascinating and sparkling conversation, full of surprising facts and insights on the fruits and vegetables we eat every day (at least we should) and how they get to our table.

Plus you will hear directly form Katherine what it’s like to become a startup entrepreneur in college – what lessons has she drawn?

Strella Biotechnology is one to watch –and so is Katherine, who is just getting started.

Enjoy the episode, share it with friends and colleagues, and if you can spare a few minutes do write us a review on iTunes. Thanks for being curious!
Another link to follow on Food Waste: John Oliver's masterful take on the problem a few years ago, which opened many people's eyes to this travesty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8xwLWb0lLY