Most agricultural startups pitch a better way to grow the crops farmers already plant every year. Renata Reinheimer’s company is trying to make some of those crops stop needing to be replanted at all.
The award, and what it actually recognizes
Reinheimer, CEO and co-founder of the Argentine biotech company INFIRA, received the Best Woman Entrepreneur 2026 special mention at this year’s WIPO Global Awards, presented by the World Intellectual Property Organization with support from ITC SheTrades. INFIRA itself won the Agrifood Startup category outright, selected from more than 1,300 applicants across 126 countries, one of just 11 total winners the WIPO Global Awards named this year.
That selectivity is worth sitting with: roughly 1,300 applicants worldwide, competing across every category the awards cover, agriculture, health, environment, ICT, creative industries and sports, and INFIRA was one of 11 that made it through.
What INFIRA’s technology actually does
INFIRA’s core technology works on a genuinely specific, unusual problem: turning annual crops, plants that naturally live and produce for a single growing season before needing to be replanted, into perennial varieties capable of living and regrowing across multiple seasons without replanting.
That distinction matters more than it might first sound. Annual replanting is a real, recurring cost for farmers, in seed, labor and the soil disruption that comes from repeated tilling and planting cycles. A crop variety that survives and regrows season after season, without sacrificing the yield characteristics that made the annual version commercially viable in the first place, addresses a cost and sustainability problem that’s built into how most major food crops are currently farmed, not a problem specific to one region or one type of farm.
Reinheimer’s research background is where the company’s science actually comes from
Reinheimer is a researcher at Argentina’s CONICET (the National Scientific and Technical Research Council), based at the Litoral Agribiotechnology Institute, and co-founded INFIRA alongside her academic research rather than launching the company as a separate, disconnected commercial venture. That’s a meaningful detail: INFIRA’s core technology traces directly back to Reinheimer’s own institutional research work, rather than licensing or acquiring the underlying science from elsewhere.
INFIRA was founded in 2020, and in the years since has built a genuinely international intellectual-property footprint: the company holds granted patents and pending applications across 33 countries, with a brand presence on all five continents, a rare scale of international IP protection for a company that’s only been operating for roughly six years.
Why this fits a broader pattern worth watching in agricultural biotech
INFIRA’s approach sits inside a larger, recognized research direction in agriculture: perennial crop development as a response to the environmental and economic costs of annual monoculture farming. Research institutions globally have worked on perennial versions of major grain crops for years, but the field has historically struggled to move from research-stage results to commercially viable, patent-protected products farmers can actually plant at scale.
INFIRA’s WIPO recognition, specifically for using intellectual property effectively to bring the technology toward market, suggests the company has made real progress on that harder, second half of the problem: not just proving the underlying science works, but building the patent protection and commercial structure needed to actually reach farmers with it.
What to watch next
With WIPO’s recognition adding international visibility to a company that’s already built out significant patent protection across 33 countries, the next meaningful signal to watch for is commercial adoption data, how many farmers or agricultural partners actually plant INFIRA’s perennial crop varieties at scale, rather than further awards or research recognition alone.
Frequently asked questions
What does INFIRA’s technology actually do?
INFIRA develops perennial versions of annual crops, engineering plants that can live and regrow across multiple growing seasons without needing to be replanted each year, aiming to reduce the seed, labor and soil-disruption costs tied to annual replanting.
What award did Renata Reinheimer win?
She received the Best Woman Entrepreneur 2026 special mention at the WIPO Global Awards, presented with support from ITC SheTrades, while her company INFIRA separately won the Agrifood Startup category outright among more than 1,300 global applicants.
How big is INFIRA’s intellectual-property footprint?
The company, founded in 2020, holds granted patents and pending applications across 33 countries, with a brand presence on all five continents, a significant international IP scale for a company operating for roughly six years.
For more on how founders turn research into real companies, see our companion piece on how Zapier built toward an $800 million business without ever taking VC money.
