With a three-year pilot, GrowMark and InnerPlant will put out plots on InnerSoy, the startups first commercial product.
InnerSoy are soybeans engineered to fluoresce when under attack from fungus.
In 2024, Growmark will establish sentinel locations for its InnerSoy plots to provide early warning of disease infestations near production soybean farms. The goal is two fold: provide precision scouting and improved agronomic intelligence.
“Growmark’s focus on providing farmers with the tools they need to efficiently and sustainably feed the world makes them an ideal partner for our in-field pilot,” said Dan Garblik, InnerPlant’s senior vice president of operations and finance. “Working with their experts will help us explore ways we can provide value to their farmer customers, as well as understand and optimize real-world operations.”
InnerSoy is genetically engineered to omit signals when stressed, which are detectable from as far away as space. The company says its products can show stress signals two weeks before current detection methods.
Growmark says this pilot layers with other related technology it is gaining experience with such as spore cams, remote sensing, and manual in-field scouting.
”Farmers face a tremendous amount of risk from the weather, geopolitical events, and pathogens,” said Growmark CEO Mark Orr. “This pilot gives our farmer-customers first access to cutting-edge technology that taps directly into plant physiology to give them critical data they need to mitigate some of that risk and better protect their crops.”
