DAVIS, CALIF. — Matthew Plavan has been promoted to chief executive officer of Arcadia Biosciences, Inc. He will succeed Raj Ketkar, president and c.e.o., who is set to retire on Sept. 1.

Mr. Plavan joined Arcadia in 2016 as chief financial officer. Over the past three years he has played a key role in shifting the company’s focus toward crop innovation and commercialization. In February, he was named president of Arcadia Specialty Genomics, which is the company’s new strategic business unit devoted to hemp.

Prior to joining Arcadia, Mr. Plavan was c.e.o. and board member at Cesca Therapeutics. Earlier, he was c.f.o. at StrionAir and Reason, Inc.

He received a bachelor’s degree in business economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

“I am grateful to the board for this opportunity and honored to lead such an exceptional organization of scientists, strategists and innovators,” Mr. Plavan said. “I look forward to working with this talented team to achieve large-scale commercialization of our signature nutritional ingredient, GoodWheat, and accelerate our vertically-integrated hemp seed, cultivation and extraction operations in Hawaii and other legal U.S. markets.

“Our commercial progress thus far in 2019, punctuated by our Arista wheat collaboration ... has illuminated our path to new revenue generation. With global distribution channels set for our flagship GoodWheat ingredient — high-fiber resistant-starch wheat — and our acquired experience with hemp in the lab, the field and in the product markets, we now have a clearer view on the timing and scale of incoming revenues. In fact, we believe these revenues are imminent and could scale significantly from our current levels.

“As a result, we can with confidence provide our investors financial guidance to better align market expectations for growth and value creation at Arcadia. Specifically, in 2020 and 2021, we expect total revenues will exceed $10 million and $30 million, respectively. And, with this revenue trajectory, we expect to begin generating net cash from operations in mid-to-late 2021.

“We are aligned around a single-minded focus: profitable growth. We look forward to reporting our key milestone achievements in the lab, in the field and in the commercial markets as we progress toward accomplishing these financial goals.”

Mr. Plavan will be succeeded as c.f.o. by Pam Haley. Ms. Haley joined Arcadia in 2005 as accounting manager and has held several key positions, most recently as controller. Prior to Arcadia she was a financial analyst at Exeter Life Science, Inc. and Lucent. She received a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Arizona.