Updates from the WGCIT The Western Growers Center for Innovation and Technology was created to link Western Growers members with innovators in the agtech space. Below are news updates from the Center’s startups.
Agrology
Agrology is now offering monthly webinars for growers interested in various topics from soil carbon to smoke taint, irrigation and carbon planning. Agrology kicked off the webinar series with a segment on carbon measurement titled “Soil Carbon Measurement Strategies and How They Tie into Carbon Planning.” Hosted by Agrology co-founder and CEO, Adam Koeppel, and Miguel Garcia, PhD, Sustainable Agriculture Program Manager for the Napa Resource Conservation District (RCD), this webinar was a deep dive into the various methods for measuring soil carbon and microbiome health that are available for growers and their implications for companies who are carbon planning. On August 10, Agrology and UC Davis hosted a free webinar titled: “The Art and Science of Smoke Taint Analysis and Prediction.” This is part of a partnership and new research project between Agrology and UC Davis that aims to understand smoke risk thresholds. While this work is focused on vineyards, the research has implications for fresh produce and vegetables as UC Davis has been determining wildfire smoke thresholds for growers, measuring how varying concentrations of smoke can impact fruit. The project confirmed that Agrology sensors in fact keep growers updated on real-time smoke risk in the vineyard, alerting them of thresholds when wildfires threaten their crops or teams. Anyone interested in accessing these or future webinars can do so at agrology.ag. Martha Montoya, the Founder & CEO of Agtools, was named to the Forbes 50 Over 50 List due to her work in Innovation. Forbes wrote: “At age 56, in 2019, Martha Montoya founded AgTools, a SaaS platform that collects real-time government and institutional data on specialty crops and commodities. Food businesses and farmers use AgTools to monitor crop supply chains, determine which pieces of produce are selling the best and which are the most profitable. Montoya has a 25-year history in agriculture and currently also serves on the California State Board of Food and Agriculture and the Institute of Food Technologies. Originally from Colombia, she faced significant hurdles in raising capital for AgTools in the U.S.—she met her first angel investor in 2018 through Wilson Sonsini's female-founder accelerator program, and has raised $5.6 million in total funding to date.” In the first half of 2023, and on a boot-strapped budget, we designed, built and trialed a robotic brassica harvester which was successful in selectively harvesting fresh-market broccoli at speed. Our system can accurately detect broccoli size and cut-coordinates despite significant amounts of leaf occlusion. We are looking forward to taking early orders in 2024. We have two updates on field trials: First, we are doing field trials in fumigated strawberry systems focused on rebuilding beneficial soil communities that correlate to increasing marketable yields. This includes working with Cal Poly Strawberry Center on replicated trials and third-party small plot independent researchers (Growers Research Innovation Network) to build robust datasets using molecular profiling, pre and post fumigation. The second update is that we are conducting replicated field trials focused on reducing cadmium uptake in spinach using heavy metal reducing fermented microbial consortia.
AgTools
Axis7
Bio S.I. Technology
SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2023
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Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com
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