AgReliant Genetics, the third largest seed corn company in North America, and SlantRange, a leading provider of remote sensing and analytics systems for agriculture, announced today a partnership to integrate SlantRange’s Aerial Phenotyping solution into the AgReliant seed breeding technology platform.
“As part of our ongoing commitment to bring the highest impact and most productive seed solutions to market for our customers, we are excited to partner with SlantRange to dramatically expand our ability to accurately and efficiently monitor plant traits in our field trials,” said Peter Lynch, Ph.D., Vice President of Research, AgReliant Genetics. “SlantRange’s broad suite of validated analytics coupled with their robust intellectual property portfolio for aerial measurement technologies made them an ideal partner as we continue to expand our research and development platform.”
The SlantRange Aerial Phenotyping platform provides a turnkey solution to accurately measure and track a variety of agronomic traits for each and every plot of a field trial using multispectral sensors on autonomous drones. The system provides calibrated metrics and statistics ranging from plant count and size measurements to plant health and vigor, which are tracked across the course of a season to provide a comprehensive model of crop performance. The automated workflow combines planter information with in-season measurements, generating plot-level data to guide decisions on hybrid breeding, genetics, advancement, and commercialization.
AgReliant has partnered with SlantRange to implement custom automation and enterprise integration features to provide a seamless data flow from the field measurements to the AgReliant trial management and genetics database. By adopting this leading technology, AgReliant is replacing time-consuming, sparse, and often subjective human measurements with efficient, quantitative, and highly scalable automated measurements to advance and accelerate their research and breeding programs. Coupled with the access to independent globally-positioned research facilities and germplasm through the AgReliant parent companies — KWS and Groupe Limagrain — the SlantRange Aerial Phenotyping platform will further enhance AgReliant’s ability to bring the most competitive seed products to market throughout the U.S. and Canada.
“Our team at SlantRange is dedicated to providing unique and high-value remote sensing and analytics capabilities for research, breeding, and production agriculture applications, so we’re thrilled to be partnered with AgReliant to build and scale their next-generation technology platform upon our Aerial Phenotyping solutions,” said Michael Ritter, SlantRange CEO.
