InnerPlant wins USDA/APHIS approval for flagship commerical product, a soy plant that communicates when under attack from fungus

InnerPlant, the company creating a new category of seed technology that unlocks data and makes global farming more efficient and sustainable, announces that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) approved multiple Regulatory Status Review (RSR) requests.  

The RSR approvals include:

• InnerPlant’s first commercial product, a soybean fungal sensor currently undergoing field testing with farmer trials scheduled for 2024 and on track for commercial launch in 2025
  

• An always-on soybean that emits a constant signal used in the crop development process and to calibrate and refine detection capabilities

″USDA approval confirms our due diligence around the safety of our technology and reduces the time and complexity of our commercial development cycle,″ explains Randy Shultz, Ph.D., InnerPlant’s Senior Vice President of R&D, Commercialization. ″And it’s an encouraging proof point as we continue working toward global regulatory approvals.″

InnerPlant engineers crops to produce safe and long-studied proteins when under attack from pathogens or when short of water or specific nutrients. The proteins emit optical signals - detectable from as far away as space - that show farmers exactly what kind of help plants need within 48 hours of stress onset, which is as much as two weeks before stress is visible in the field.

Historically, farmers lacked early actionable data and broadly apply agrochemicals as a preventative measure. However, studies show that farmers lose as much as 40% of yields or $220B worldwide due to pathogens in spite of overapplication that sees as much as 30% or $250B of pesticides wasted - negatively impacting air, water and soil.

InnerPlant’s new category of seed technology delivers traits that tap directly into plants’ physiology and provide farmers with actionable data that is both early and specific to particular stresses in a scalable and economical way.

The news comes on the heels of recent announcements across key ecosystem areas including a collaboration with satellite partner Satellogic to launch a space-based signal detection device in Q4 of 2023 and to bring InnerPlant’s traits to elite soybean germplasm with Mertec, LLC.