Tech to Table by Richard Munson

Author:Richard Munson [Munson, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781642831917
Publisher: Island Press

Diane Wu (left) and Poornima Parameswaran (right), cofounders of Trace Genomics. Credit: Trace Genomics.

We then “decode the soil data,” say the Trace Genomics cofounders. “Harnessing machine learning, we conduct high-speed, cost-efficient data analysis to compare against a large and growing set of soil data.”5 Their core market is farmers, who use their information to make better decisions about their crops. Jerry Dove, an Iowa farmer, attests, “It’s good to see this new data, so we can put values on how we are making improvements.”6

The start-up’s founders also tackle broader environmental problems. Their belowground insights reveal the damage done by industrial agriculture’s multidecade war on beneficial microbes and highlight how that harm can be reversed. And as climate change threatens crops and accelerates diseases and pest invasions, they use genomics analysis to calculate whether individual fields could benefit from drought- or heat-resistant plants and resilient microbes.

With this information in hand, Trace Genomics identifies biological seed coatings that stimulate soil microbes to release nitrogen and other nutrients that benefit crop roots. (Chapter 18 profiles an innovator creating such coatings.) “It’s a new field,” says Parameswaran, “exciting because you are creating new tools and applications.”7

Although based on natural ingredients, those applications have raised the ire of some advocates of organic and regenerative agriculture. “The microbial communities that exist in animal guts and in the soil have evolved over eons,” asserts author Tom Philpott, the food and agriculture correspondent for Mother Jones magazine. “I suspect that diverse diets and crop rotations—not lab-grown potions—are key to engendering healthy biomes, both within our bodies and in the dirt.”8

Despite this criticism, the coatings allow farmers to vastly reduce their spraying of expensive synthetic fertilizers that pollute waterways. Trace Genomics’ data and analytics also help cultivators reduce disease. Soybean growers, for instance, fear a fungus that causes sudden death syndrome and attacks plants so late in the growing season that little can be done to treat the disease and save the crop. By utilizing Trace’s soil intelligence, however, farmers can detect traces of the fungus early, in time to protect their plants proactively.

In addition to its detractors, the firm faces numerous competitors and challenges. Other biotechnology firms—such as Benson Hill in St. Louis, Missouri, and AgBiome in Durham, North Carolina—utilize cloud-based biology and genomics to offer advanced screenings for the agricultural sector, and Alphabet’s X lab, the former Google division that launched the Waymo self-driving car, has developed a four-wheel rover-like prototype, what it calls a “plant buggy,” that studies soils and environmental factors with a mix of cameras and sensors. To show unique value to farmers, many of whom distrust new technologies, Wu and Parameswaran recognize they must raise more capital, lower the costs of soil studies, and reduce the analysis time from days to seconds.

Although neither founder has worked the land, both claim a family relationship, with Wu’s grandfather a third-generation produce grower and Parameswaran’s uncle the owner of a local fishery. Being newcomers themselves to farming, the pair initially talked a lot with cultivators, learning their perspectives and concerns.

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