Cooling Crops is an academic spinout building sprayable “climate shields” that help farmers keep producing food under today's challenging land degradation and thermal stress conditions. Today, 20–40% of global arable land is affected by soil degradation, and climate‑driven heatwaves, frost and chill‑hour deficits routinely cut yields by 10–30% in key regions, while input costs for water and fertilizer keep rising. Farmers are paying more to grow less, and many of the available fixes — chemical dormancy breakers, plastic mulches, energy‑hungry frost fans and heaters — either harm the environment or are too expensive for broad use.
We offer two natural, sprayable biostimulant products that can be applied with existing equipment:
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CoolEmerge is a soil treatment for specialty row crops that rebuilds the living biocrust using cellulose nanocrystals and local cyanobacteria, reducing wind erosion, tripling water retention and cooling the soil surface by 3–6°C; in early field trials it has improved carrot emergence by 3–12%.
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CoolGrowth is a canopy spray for fruit and nut trees, orchards and vines that uses passive radiative cooling to supply missing chill portions and buffer frost and heat events, targeting 20–50% yield losses currently seen in apples, kiwifruit, grapes and other perennials due to lack of sufficient winter chill and excess summer heat.
Our social mission is to make climate‑resilient production affordable and accessible. By protecting yields on stressed land and in volatile climates, our products help farmers stabilize incomes, reduce pressure to clear new land and lower the need for water, fertilizer, risky chemicals and expensive infrastructure. We work through local fertilizer and agrochemical partners in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand so that millions of farmers can access this technology through familiar channels as a simple “blend and spray” product.