October 24, 2022

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

Soil is a living ecosystem; home to billions of microorganisms that all factor into our ability to achieve the highest potential in crop production. However, despite its critical role, we still know far less about soil than we do about the crops it grows. 

Further complicating the relationship and intensifying the urgency,  more topsoil is lost from agricultural production each year than is added. As seasons progress, we lose another 1 percent of our topsoil each year, according to Jeremy Stroud and Michael DeSa in their article Soil Erosion and Degradation: Opportunity Amid the Loss, published by GAI News in 2019.

According to the academic paper Functional Soil Microbiome: Belowground Solutions to an Aboveground Problem  by Venkatachalam Lakshmanan, Gopinath Selvaraj, and Harsh P. Bais from the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences at the University of Delaware, the plant microbiome encompasses the “diverse functional gene pool, originating from viruses, prokaryotes, and eukaryotes, associated with various habitats of a plant host. Such plant habitats range from the whole organism (individual plants) to specific organs (e.g. roots, leaves, shoots, flowers, and seeds, including zones of interaction between roots and the surrounding soil).” This symbiotic relationship can protect plants from disease, drought, and insect attacks and prevent plants from drying out during extended droughts.

Better understanding of the soil microbiome breeds better understanding of what crops need – enabling farmers to boost food production and achieve greater efficiencies in regard to crop yields.

In recent years, farmers, researchers, and investors have internalized the importance of gaining this deeper understanding. However, endeavors to understand the soil microbiome are fairly new, and have broadly taken a chemistry based approach, not considering the biological layer of the soil microbiome.

Part of this new approach is the realization that we have to take a wider, more inclusive view of agriculture – considering the entire “microbiome”, or the totality of genetic material that make up a working system. And agtech startups and their backers are stepping up to provide insight and solutions.

One such leader is California-based Biome Makers, a leading global agtech startup in soil health analysis that has just announced a capital commitment of $1.6 million from the European Union, reflective of a strong need for solutions in connection to soil biology and agriculture.

This capital will be used to accelerate the development of BeCrop, Biome Makers’ soil intelligence technology platform that enables the company to connect soil biology to agricultural decision making for optimized production and the reversal of soil degradation.

By decoding soil biology this platform helps farmers improve productivity while also improving the sustainability of their land. And armed with the world’s largest taxonomic reference database and more than 415,000 hectares of soil samples analyzed, the BeCrop tech stack is setting the standard for soil health.

“It is very simple,” said Alberto Acedo, PhD., CSO and co-founder, Biome Makers. “Would one prescribe medications to oneself without seeing a professional and conducting a blood test? BeCrop® works the same way. It provides all the intelligence you need before and after prescribing and applying products to your farmland.”

This funding from the EU comes a little more than a year after the company closed on a $15 million Series B in August 2021 led by Prosus Ventures, and announced partnership with Bayer Crop Science on the first AI virtual assistant for sustainable farming in April 2021. 

“This is an exciting time for the agriculture community,” said Adrian Ferrero, CEO and co-founder, Biome Makers. “For the first time, we communicate with the soil through BeCrop.  The soil can tell us what it needs, what isn’t working, and how we can help.”

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor in chief with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Unconventional Ag. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.

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