SuperfruiterSuperfruiter
Dr. Kobi Tadmor: Pioneering the Future of Agriculture
“I like to explore plant variations, offer explanations for them, and then prove that those explanations are sound,” says Dr. Kobi Tadmor. This intuition led him to a groundbreaking discovery those could boost agricultural crop yields by tens of percent without compromising quality.
Dr. Tadmor’s dream is to identify new varieties that add value, initially through understanding pigments and their production mechanisms. In his heart, he wanted to develop a red melon. Dr. Tadmor, 69, a former team leader at the Neve Ya’er research center of the Volcani Institute and now the chief scientist at Superfruiter, began his journey in 2008 by experimenting with melon mutations. Inspired by his friend Prof. Danny Zamir, an Israel Prize laureate in genetics, Tadmor embarked on a melon quest similar to Zamir’s melon with tomatoes.
Tadmor’s interest in colors started years earlier when he sought a corn strain with bioavailable phosphate. His daughter’s request for red corn led to a development setback: the red corn turned brown when cooked. Leveraging his knowledge of melon pigmentation mechanisms, Tadmor aimed to create a red melon by altering a single gene. Though his melons aren’t red, their development journey is fascinating! The initial genetic modification yielded melons with a bright yellow color. Tadmor then generated thousands of mutated melon varieties by treating seeds with DNA- altering substances and self-fertilizing the resulting plants to assess their scientific and commercial viability.
One genetic change left Tadmor and his team astonished. “Out of 16 plants, four produced 30 fruits each, instead of the usual two to four,” he recalls. These fruits were smaller, seedless, wonderfully flavoured, and aromatic— akin to Charentais melons cherished by the French. The empty seeds nature of the new melons delighted consumers who prefer fruit without seeds but presented a challenge for cultivation. This unique characteristic remains central to SuperFruiter’s technological innovations. Recognizing the commercial potential, Tadmor noted that while traditional melon varieties average between 1.5 to 2.0 kg. weight each, his new variety produced 20-30 fruits weighing 300 grams each, effectively doubling the yield. This revolutionary invention promises to significantly enhance agricultural productivity, marking a major advancement in Agritech.