New technology could alert growers to plant stresses weeks before we can see those stresses on the plant. It’s from the ag tech company InnerPlant, which creates crops that emit specific optical signals when they’re under stress from pathogen attacks, such as fungal infections. Vice President of Communications for InnerPlant, Sean Yokomizo says those signals are visible from satellites weeks before the stress is visible to the human eye at field level.
He explained that plants have an immune response just like humans and when they’re stressed, they react at the molecular level. InnerPlant tracks those molecular sites and inserts another piece of DNA so that when the plant is reacting to a specific stress, it creates a fluorescent protein. That florescence is detectable from space.
“The cool thing about that is [the stress is detected] very early because it’s tied to the plant’s immune response. So, within 24 hours of infection or stress, it begins to emit the signal and that is four to six weeks before it would be detectable in the field,” Yokomizo said.
Agronomists can use that data to treat the individual plant that’s under stress, which means only treating plants that need it, catching problems very early, and using less chemicals in precise treatments. Yokomizo says the technology can collect a lot of data, but the farmer won’t have to weed through a lot of unneeded information to get the data they need.
“We’ve designed this system to be very straightforward. It’s contained in the seed and farmers know how to work seeds. They plant them, they grow them, and then we provide the recommendation based on the signal,” he said. “There’s an awful lot of data going on behind the scenes, but we’re providing the farmer with a usable, simple tool that’s indicative of early action.”
Yokomizo said that early action is a crucial component.
“Knowing your house is on fire is a great thing to know, but wouldn’t it be better to know like, hey, there’s smoke coming from your kitchen, you should do something about it now? And that’s the that’s the loop that we’re trying to close for farmers, to give them actionable information that’s early enough so they can take that action and preserve their yields before they’re impacted.”
You can see samples of what the satellites see on the InnerPlant website.
Sabrina Halvorson
National Correspondent / AgNet Media, Inc.
Sabrina Halvorson is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, and public speaker who specializes in agriculture. She primarily reports on legislative issues and hosts The AgNet Weekly podcast. Sabrina is a native of California’s agriculture-rich Central Valley.