Work in Progress
Selva
Real-Time Airborne DNA Analysis for Regenerative Agriculture
Selva was a venture I founded to make biodiversity monitoring scalable, using airborne eDNA — collecting biological particles from the air, such as pollen, spores and animal traces, to give precise, actionable insight into ecosystem health.
Designed to support the transition to regenerative agriculture, the approach was non-invasive, scalable and low-cost — helping farms and brands track biodiversity, detect risks and validate sustainability efforts.
Shortlisted · 2024
Nominated · 2025Selva was shortlisted for the Terra Carta Design Lab — Royal College of Art × Sustainable Markets Initiative, backed by HRH The King and Sir Jony Ive — nominated for the Earthshot Prize, and presented at the Royal Society.
The problem
Monocultures dominate 94% of global farmland. The shift to regenerative agriculture is hard to prove — and incoming ESG regulation (like the EU Deforestation Regulation) is turning biodiversity measurement into a requirement, not a nice-to-have.
How it works
- Personalisation — a farmer drops their location and main crop on a map.
- AI data fusion — Selva fuses biodiversity data from trusted sources: species databases, weather models, satellite imagery.
- Insights — it tracks how the farm’s activity affects species richness, habitats and ESG compliance, with localised, real-time updates.
From prototype to the field
The version I showed at Terra Carta was an early prototype — a tripod-mounted sampler that drew air through a custom-designed cartridge, trapping biological particles on a filter to be sent off for lab sequencing.
On the strength of a Letter of Intent from Restore Nature, I kept developing it toward a drone- and ATV-mounted sampler built to cover real acreage in the field.
The platform
An at-a-glance read on the life around a farm — what’s there, what’s likely, and what the farm’s practices are bringing back.
Metrics designed to align with CSRD and TNFD biodiversity reporting.
Advisors
Field trials & partners
10,000 acres committed for trials with Restore Nature, across five diverse habitats to test algorithm reliability. Partnerships established with Mars and Ferrero; lab analysis support from Applied Genomics.
I also brought a startup’s perspective to a Climate Change Adaptation Innovation Network biodiversity workshop (Innovate UK / Knowledge Transfer Network, October 2024), reviewing key themes alongside biodiversity experts from councils across the UK.
Where it landed
I kept developing Selva, but the deeper I got the clearer it became that biodiversity sits as a last-order priority for the big food companies it would need to serve (the Mars and Danone end of the market) — net zero comes first, and biodiversity is much further down the list — so I stepped back and put my energy into shipping software. The research, the partnerships and the recognition stand.