With semi-permanent installations in the field, Sporando early alert system is helping farmers optimize their use of fungicides.
“Fungal diseases cost the ag industry a lot of money, globally $13 billion are spent on fungicides, and yet there are still $16 billion in losses each year to disease,” says co-founder Kristine White. “This is the issue that we’re tackling. And we’re doing that through and inexpensive and easy to use wind powered air sampler and highly sensitive DNA analysis.”
With less than 24 hour turnaround in its results, Spornado gives farmers timely information about the crop diseases in the air to more precisely plan for spray application. The Spornado systems are installed one every 100 acres.
“I think one of the prime reasons we’ve really struck a chord with farmers is because currently, they actually don’t know when the disease is in their fields, until they see it and then it’s way too late,” White says. “Right now there’s a lot of guesswork involved in anticipating when the disease may strike and when to spray, and this guesswork has resulted in sometimes some ineffective maybe unnecessary spraying, which has also led to diseases becoming more and more resistant fungicides making the farmer’s job more difficult.”
Spornado is a participant in the Row Crop Challenge, a program in partnership with AgLaunch which gives tech startups programming via the AgLaunch 365 accelerator. AgLaunch has a farmer-centric approach which brings innovations to farmers at very early stages to be refined and advanced at a faster pace. This year, Spornado is being tested by farmer members of the AgLaunch network in Oregon, Iowa and Arkansas.
Spornado has marketed is technology to potato growers in Canada, Idaho and the United Kingdom. One of its focuses with AgLaunch has been how the technology fits in row crops such as corn and soybeans.
“The data has to be actionable. So having discussions directly with the farmer has helped us a lot to choose which crops Spornado can be useful in,” she says. “Sometimes the feedback has actually been surprising. Corn is an example of that. When we initially looked at it we thought many areas they maybe only spray once if at all, so we really didn’t see a lot of opportunity for Spornaod. But after speaking with some AgLaunch farmers, it appeared that knowing whether or not a couple of fungal diseases are present in corn can actually be really valuable. And with good spray timing when it’s needed, that can have a significant impact on yield.”
Entrepreneurs can learn more about AgLaunch and apply for the Row Crop Challenge here.
Farmers can also learn about how they can become a farmer member here.
