89
Another area of intense innovation and startup activity in the last 5–10 years is
that of precision agriculture. Further details on this topic are provided by Sonka in
Chap. 8 of this volume. At the convergence of big data management, satellite imagery, remote sensing, computer vision, and precision input application technologies,
startups and venture capitalists are hustling to develop the technologies that will
make farming more data driven, productive, and sustainable. Precision agriculture
is not a new concept, as farmers adopted GPS-connected equipment in the 1990s to
increase productivity; but with the advent of remote sensing, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, aka drones), high-speed internet, and other technological advancements, precision agriculture is becoming the mainstream.
11
As it happened with
other technologies, the large seed companies invested heavily to develop their digital agricultural services’ platforms. The most notable exits in this space are the
Monsanto’s acquisition of the Climate Corporation in 2013 and DowDuPont’s
acquisition of Granular in 2017.
Today’s farmers have access to an enormous amount of data. But data without
integration and management recommendations are of little use. Some of the challenges facing precision agriculture are the integration of big data into a single platform, interpretation of remote sensing and scouting data through crop consultants or
apps that make use of artificial intelligence, and the implementation of recommendations about planting decisions and application of inputs across entire farms.
But the area which has perhaps attracted the most interest from scientists, investors, and the public alike is that of genome editing. With the discovery of CRISPRCas9 genome editing technology in 2012, published almost simultaneously by
scientists at the Vilnius University, Lithuania (Gasiunas et al. 2012), on one hand,
and by scientists at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of
Vienna, and Umea University (Jinek et al. 2012) on the other, the field immediately
triggered a flurry of entrepreneurial activity, with the founding of multiple startups
and massive investments by the venture capital community. The world of plant
genetic innovations was once again coming into focus. While genome editing wasn’t
new in itself, since it had been pioneered through the use of zinc finger nucleases as
early as the 1980s and by using meganucleases and TALENs thereafter, CRISPR
technology made the precise editing of genomes an affordable and facile endeavor.
Before CRISPR, most companies had to resort to using transgenes to bring genetic
improvements to market, a process which took in average 13 years and cost $130MM
for existing products
12
and was increasingly becoming more costly and taking longer, as the regulatory path became gradually more complicated. This limited transgenic improvements only to major crops such as maize and soybeans, where
companies could envision making a return on their investment. With CRISPR technology and the prospects of an appropriate regulatory framework in the United
States and other countries recognizing that CRISPR-edited crops are not transgenic
crops, the field opened widely to academic researchers and startups.
11 https://agfundernews.com/what-is-precision-agriculture.html - Accessed 8/25/2019.
12 https://croplife.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf_files/Getting-a-Biotech-Crop-to-Market-PhillipsMcDougall-Study.pdf - Accessed 9/2/2019.
3 Open Innovation and Value Creation in Crop Genetics
Another area of intense innovation and startup activity in the last 5–10 years is
that of precision agriculture. Further details on this topic are provided by Sonka in
Chap. 8 of this volume. At the convergence of big data management, satellite imagery, remote sensing, computer vision, and precision input application technologies,
startups and venture capitalists are hustling to develop the technologies that will
make farming more data driven, productive, and sustainable. Precision agriculture
is not a new concept, as farmers adopted GPS-connected equipment in the 1990s to
increase productivity; but with the advent of remote sensing, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, aka drones), high-speed internet, and other technological advancements, precision agriculture is becoming the mainstream.
11
As it happened with
other technologies, the large seed companies invested heavily to develop their digital agricultural services’ platforms. The most notable exits in this space are the
Monsanto’s acquisition of the Climate Corporation in 2013 and DowDuPont’s
acquisition of Granular in 2017.
Today’s farmers have access to an enormous amount of data. But data without
integration and management recommendations are of little use. Some of the challenges facing precision agriculture are the integration of big data into a single platform, interpretation of remote sensing and scouting data through crop consultants or
apps that make use of artificial intelligence, and the implementation of recommendations about planting decisions and application of inputs across entire farms.
But the area which has perhaps attracted the most interest from scientists, investors, and the public alike is that of genome editing. With the discovery of CRISPRCas9 genome editing technology in 2012, published almost simultaneously by
scientists at the Vilnius University, Lithuania (Gasiunas et al. 2012), on one hand,
and by scientists at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of
Vienna, and Umea University (Jinek et al. 2012) on the other, the field immediately
triggered a flurry of entrepreneurial activity, with the founding of multiple startups
and massive investments by the venture capital community. The world of plant
genetic innovations was once again coming into focus. While genome editing wasn’t
new in itself, since it had been pioneered through the use of zinc finger nucleases as
early as the 1980s and by using meganucleases and TALENs thereafter, CRISPR
technology made the precise editing of genomes an affordable and facile endeavor.
Before CRISPR, most companies had to resort to using transgenes to bring genetic
improvements to market, a process which took in average 13 years and cost $130MM
for existing products
12
and was increasingly becoming more costly and taking longer, as the regulatory path became gradually more complicated. This limited transgenic improvements only to major crops such as maize and soybeans, where
companies could envision making a return on their investment. With CRISPR technology and the prospects of an appropriate regulatory framework in the United
States and other countries recognizing that CRISPR-edited crops are not transgenic
crops, the field opened widely to academic researchers and startups.
11 https://agfundernews.com/what-is-precision-agriculture.html - Accessed 8/25/2019.
12 https://croplife.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf_files/Getting-a-Biotech-Crop-to-Market-PhillipsMcDougall-Study.pdf - Accessed 9/2/2019.
3 Open Innovation and Value Creation in Crop Genetics