SlantRange, a San Diego startup building software for agricultural drones landed a partnership with a major crop company on July 23. SlantRange is working with AgReliant Genetics, the third-largest seed corn company in North America, to better monitor plant traits in its field trials.
“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,” AgReliant Genetics Vice President of Research Peter Lynch said in a news release.
Measuring Particular Traits
SlantRange originally began equipping drones with sensors that could detect a variety of crop characteristics, including chlorophyll content, to determine if the plants are healthy or under stress. Last year, the company built a new aerial phenotyping solution that allows researchers and crop breeders to measure particular traits, including a plant’s count, size and vigor. The alternative, for most companies is sending humans into the field to take these measurements, which can be time-consuming and subjective, according to SlantRange.
AgReliant plans to use SlantRange’s systems to accelerate its research and breeding program. It will integrate the aerial phenotyping solution with its seed breeding platform.
“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,” SlantRange CEO Michael Ritter said in a news release.
