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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

agriculture technology

Watch This Video of Innerplant’s Glowing Plants in Action

InnerPlant is an agtech company that engineers plant DNA to turn them into “living sensors”. When plants glow a certain color, this signals that it is stressed from lack of water, pests, or nutrient deficiencies. This helps farmers spot stressed plants much more quickly than they normally would be able to, and therefore have a better chance of mitigating crop loss.

Last week, The Spoon was given a virtual zoom tour of the InnerPlant facilities and shown the glowing plants under lasers. The company had examples of the two plant species it is currently working with, tomatoes and Arabidopsis. The colored light is not visible to the human eye, so Roderick Kumimoto, the Chief Science Officer of InnerPlant, used different laser pointers to demonstrate the glow. In the field, farmers use InnerPlant’s augmented reality system to photograph with an iPhone or iPad to detect glowing plants.

As you can see, the engineered plants look just like the regular non-engineered plants in normal lighting. Turn the lights off and point a laser at them, the engineered tomato and Arabidopsis plants have a yellow, red-orange, and green glow.

To create the living sensor plants, InnerPlant adds a fluorescent protein (which is safe for human consumption) into the plant’s DNA. Different colors signal different problems. If the farmer is using satellites or drones to view the plants from above, then up to three colors can be detected. From a ground-level view, upwards of seven to eight colors can be seen.

The companies first products are tomato and Arabidopsis plants that signal if they are under attack by fungus or pests. Currently, the company is working on commercializing InnerSoy plants. After that, they plan to develop cotton and corn versions of their glowing plants.

Edete Precision Technologies Increases Pistachio Yields With Pollinator Robots

Many plants and trees rely on natural phenomena like bees and wind to be pollinated and produce fruit. However, bee colony collapse and climate change threaten the ability of these crops to be pollinated. An Israeli ag-tech start-up called Edete Precision Technologies addresses this mounting concern using robots and artificial pollination technology.

This week, the company announced in a press release sent to The Spoon that it has successfully used its robot pollinators to increase yields in pistachio orchards by 24 percent. 

The start-up’s robot is called the 2BeTM pollinator, and it disperses a precise amount of pollen into flowers during the pistachio tree blooming season. Normally, pistachio trees are naturally pollinated by the wind blowing pollen (male sperm) into the female ovule. However, climate change may be contributing to the desynchronization of male and female trees blossoming, which results in lower crop yields. 

For pistachio farmers, this 24 percent increase in yields equates to an additional $1,850 in income per acre.

The last time The Spoon wrote about Edete, the company was addressing the problem of bee colony collapse and the role this plays in the crops that depend on this. In Australia and California, Edete uses its technology to artificially pollinate almond trees. 

Robots and automation are becoming more prevalent in agriculture. Tevel, another Israel-based ag-tech company, developed flying robots for harvesting fruit. Farmwise, Small Robot Company, and Greenfield Robotics all have different variations of autonomous weed-picking robots.

Edete completed its pilot run of artificially pollinated pistachio trees in Sacramento, California on an 82-acre orchard. Now, the company is gearing up to offer its pollination technology to other growers in California for when the pistachio blooming season starts in April 2022.

You can see how Edete’s robotic pollination works in the video below:

Edete Artificial Pollination 2020

Oishii is Bringing its Specialty Indoor Strawberries to Los Angeles

The Omakase Berry is a varietal of strawberry grown in Japan known for its creamy texture, level of sweetness, and aromatic qualities. Courtesy of Oishii, a controlled environment agriculture (CEA) company that grows strawberries, Omakase Berries are coming to Los Angeles.

Oishii currently has two indoor farm locations on the East Coast in New York and New Jersey, and the new Los Angeles facility will be the first on the West Coast. According to the press release sent to The Spoon, Oishii is the “only vertical farming company to have perfected the strawberry at commercial scale”. Its indoor farms use zero pesticides, and its strawberries are a carbon-neutral crop.

When we last wrote about Oishii in April 2021, an eight-pack of the Omakase Berries cost $50. Unfortunately, heading west hasn’t resulted in lower prices, despite the company’s stated plans that it had plans to start growing an “everyday berry” that would be offered at a more affordable price. If you want to order the berries in Los Angeles, they are still set at the same expensive price.

With its focus on strawberries and other fruits and vegetables, Oishii stands apart from other indoor farm companies which mainly grow leafy greens and herbs. In October 2020, Driscoll and indoor farm company, Plenty, announced their partnership to start growing strawberries indoors. Hopefully, once Plenty makes it berries commercially available and Oishii develops an “every day” strawberry, consumers will have access to a more affordable indoor-grown strawberry.

The Omakase Berries are available for pre-order on Oishii’s website. The berries are available at a restaurant called Destroyer in Los Angeles.