Plants That Can Tell Farmers What's Bothering Them - Part Two

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

InnerPlant is a startup that is recoding the DNA of commodity crops so that they can signal to farmers when they are being stressed via a protein that shows up on satellite or even handheld imagery devices. Founder and CEO Shely Aronov says this can serve as in important data set to unlock new possibilities for farmers.

Aronov… “What we want to do is create a new dataset that never existed, which is the plant dataset. And I like to refer to it as making the invisible, visible. The things that we can see, cause what we can see is weeds. And that's the reason that we use the most herbicide. It's the thing that's most visible. We want to look at other problems like fungus or very tiny insects or nitrogen deficiency; things that you can't see and make them visible. So the data set in the seeds is what we're developing and then we want to make the data collection ubiquitous. Because in my ideal world, the "smart seeds", which is what we're creating, will have as many partners working with them to create as much value as possible for the farmers.”

The technology is still in the testing phase, but plans to offer seed in the coming years. You can learn more and joining their InnerCircle of farmers at InnerPlant.com.