#Agricultural Biotech

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The Role of Agricultural Biotech in Modern Farming: A Key to Success for New Ventures in Delaware

The future of farming is shaped by science and technology—particularly in agricultural biotech. From improving crop yields to developing sustainable solutions for climate change, agrarian biotechnology plays a crucial role in how food is produced, farms are managed, and businesses can succeed in the agricultural sector. Understanding the power of agrarian biotech is essential for entrepreneurs and companies looking to start or scale a farming venture. And for those exploring opportunities in Delaware, this growing field presents significant prospects to enhance productivity, increase sustainability, and ensure long-term growth.

What is Agricultural Biotech?

Agricultural biotech involves modern biotechnology techniques to improve crop and livestock quality, yield, and resilience. This includes genetic modification, gene editing, molecular markers, and other advanced tools to help create more efficient, sustainable, and resilient agricultural systems. The goal is to address key challenges like food security, resource scarcity, and climate change while also boosting profitability for farmers and producers.

At its core, agricultural biotech is about harnessing the power of biological processes to create innovations that make farming more efficient, sustainable, and capable of meeting the demands of a growing population.

How Agricultural Biotech Helps Agriculture Prosper

The impact of agricultural biotech is transformative, and its benefits extend across various aspects of farming and food production. Here are some key ways that agricultural biotech helps the agriculture sector thrive:

1. Increased Crop Yields and Efficiency

One of the most immediate benefits of agricultural biotech is its ability to increase crop yields. Through genetic modification and gene editing techniques, biotech can make crops more resistant to diseases, pests, and environmental stressors like drought or extreme heat. For instance, biotech can produce crops that require fewer pesticides or fertilizers, which not only helps reduce input costs but also minimizes the environmental impact.

Biotech advancements in crops like corn, soybeans, wheat, and various fruits and vegetables can significantly benefit farmers in Delaware, where agriculture plays a vital role in the state's economy. Farmers can ensure better yields and predictable harvests by improving crop varieties that are more resilient to local weather conditions, contributing to a more stable and prosperous business model.

2. Sustainability and Environmental Impact

As the global population grows, the pressure on agricultural systems to produce food with fewer resources intensifies. Agricultural biotech plays a crucial role in making farming more sustainable by reducing the need for water, land, and chemicals. For example, drought-resistant crops can thrive in regions with limited water resources, which is an invaluable asset in the face of climate change.

In Delaware, a state increasingly focusing on environmental sustainability in its agricultural practices, biotech can help businesses reduce their ecological footprint. By developing crops requiring fewer pesticides or less water-intensive, agricultural ventures can contribute to more sustainable farming practices while ensuring a better product for consumers.

3. Pest and Disease Resistance

Agricultural biotech is also helping farmers combat pests and diseases that can devastate crops. Through genetic modification, researchers have developed crops resistant to certain insects or diseases, significantly reducing the need for chemical pesticides. This helps improve crop health, reduces pest control costs, and minimizes pesticide resistance risks.

For Delaware farmers, agricultural biotech can improve crop resilience, reduce reliance on harmful chemicals, and protect the overall health of local ecosystems. By adopting biotech solutions, agrarian businesses can address some of the most persistent challenges farmers face while fostering better public health and reducing environmental hazards.

4. Faster Breeding and Genetic Advancements

Traditional breeding methods can take years, even decades, to develop new varieties of crops with desirable traits. Agricultural biotech, however, accelerates this process by allowing for more precise and efficient genetic modifications. Through techniques like gene editing, scientists can now introduce beneficial traits into crops in a fraction of the time.

This faster breeding process benefits businesses looking to stay competitive in agriculture. In Delaware, where agriculture is a key industry, having access to innovative crop varieties tailored to local conditions can help entrepreneurs create more efficient, profitable, and sustainable farming operations.

5. Better Food Quality and Nutrition

Agricultural biotech also plays a crucial role in improving food's nutritional content. Scientists can enhance crop nutrition by increasing essential vitamins and minerals through genetic modification. Golden rice, for example, has been genetically engineered to contain higher vitamin A levels, addressing nutrient deficiencies that rely on rice as a staple food.

Focusing on biotech innovations that improve food quality for agricultural ventures in Delaware could provide a competitive edge, particularly as consumers increasingly demand healthier, more sustainable food options. By developing crops with improved nutritional content, businesses can meet the growing demand for more fortified and nutritious food products.

Why Delaware is the Perfect Place for Agricultural Biotech Ventures

Delaware is uniquely positioned to be a leader in agricultural biotech for several reasons. The state has a rich history of farming activity, with its fertile lands and diverse climate providing ideal conditions for testing and scaling biotech innovations. But it's not just the environment that makes Delaware attractive for agricultural businesses; it's the robust support system for biotech startups and entrepreneurs.

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"Revolutionizing Biotech: How AI is Transforming the Industry"

The biotech industry is on the cusp of a revolution, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is leading the charge. AI is transforming the way biotech researchers and developers work, enabling them to make groundbreaking discoveries and develop innovative solutions at an unprecedented pace. “Accelerating Scientific Discovery with AI” AI is augmenting human capabilities in biotech research, enabling…

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Valeria Kogan, PhD, Founder and CEO of Fermata – Interview Series

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/valeria-kogan-phd-founder-and-ceo-of-fermata-interview-series/

Valeria Kogan, PhD, Founder and CEO of Fermata – Interview Series

Valeria Kogan, PhD, Founder and CEO of Fermata has been recognized as one of Forbes’ “30 Under 30” in 2022, Valeria is a serial entrepreneur with a proven track record in biotechnology and innovation. As the founder of Fermata and the biotech firm Smartomica, Valeria combines her scientific expertise with a visionary approach to transforming industries.

Fermata is a data science company revolutionizing agriculture with cutting-edge computer vision solutions. Its flagship platform, Croptimus™, provides 24/7 automated detection of pests and diseases, helping growers identify issues like powdery mildew, bud rot, and mosaic before they escalate. By reducing scouting time and minimizing crop loss, Fermata empowers farmers to focus on solutions and maximize yield, whether in controlled environments or outdoor settings.

What inspired you to transition from bioinformatics and cancer research to agriculture technology? How did your experience with Smartomica influence the founding of Fermata?

My transition from biotech to agriculture was pretty accidental. Friends of friends of mine who were tomato producers were looking for someone with experience in AI to brainstorm together on its applications in farming. It was the time when deep learning has just started and created a lot of buzz in the tech space – it also found immediate applications in the medical domain through computer vision in radiology. Everyone in my circle was talking about it, so when I saw what the farming guys showed me – plant health issues that can be detected visually and that need to be identified in real time – it immediately clicked. I had an idea to bring the knowledge from the medical space to agriculture which was a much less popular and digitized industry back then.

With a background in AI and biotech, what challenges did you face in adapting those technologies to agriculture?

I think in general anyone who comes with a digital product to a conservative industry faces the same level of resistance. However, it’s harder if you are an outsider. My approach was and is being humble and driven by the willingness to apply my company’s knowledge to help people, not to tell them what they are doing wrong and how we can help them do it in the right way. Through every conversation with growers, we learn and try to stay open-minded and not too attached to our technology while prioritizing the needs of the grower and adjusting our product accordingly.

Fermata focuses on reducing crop losses and pesticide use. What was the initial reception of this idea in the agricultural community, and how did you convince stakeholders to adopt AI-driven solutions?

The initial reception was that it was not possible. I can’t say that much has changed over the past 5 years! We see great support from the early adopters and a lot of concerns from the broader audience. We are lucky to have customers who believe in the technology and don’t just pay us money but become the showcases for the rest of the market. The best and only thing we can really do is let the product speak for itself.

How does Croptimus™ integrate multiple data sources, such as satellite imagery, sensors, and AI models, to provide actionable insights for growers?

Currently, we use only visual data from the cameras to analyze plant health and identify pests, diseases, nutrient problems, and other issues. However, with the new developments in the AI sector, we understand the benefits that additional data sources can bring to us both for higher detection quality and also for enabling predictive analytics. Currently, we only use climate data in some projects, but plan to expand beyond that in 2025.

What makes Fermata’s early pest and disease detection capabilities unique compared to other AgTech solutions?

There are several things that make us unique. First of all, over the past 5 years, we have collected an insane database of plant images both through our customers and with our own R&D facility where we infest the plants to collect additional data. We also used an internal labeling team which we very carefully trained. In combination with a broad network of agronomy experts from across the globe, this helped us to build a very high-quality dataset. A deep understanding of machine learning in combination with the product vision helped us create a useful and simple product on top of that.

AI and computer vision are advancing rapidly. How does Fermata ensure its technology stays ahead of the curve in this competitive landscape?

At Fermata, we follow a data-centric approach, ensuring high-quality and flexible data labeling by bringing together agronomists and data scientists. We invest in diverse datasets to keep our technology competitive and we also focus on solving specific problems and collaborate with partners when needed to remain the best at what we do.

You’ve emphasized sustainability as a key goal. How do you see Fermata’s technology impacting global efforts to reduce food waste and minimize environmental harm?

By helping farmers identify pests and diseases in time we help them prevent losses, minimize food waste, and reduce pesticide use. This is especially important in the current environment when the climate is changing. Many growers suffer from new pests or diseases that they have never seen in their regions before. Because of that, early detection and assistance in tuning the mitigation strategies is essential for them.

Raising $10 million in Series A funding is a significant milestone. How will this funding accelerate Fermata’s vision, and what are your immediate priorities for growth?

We plan to use this money to grow from “The Eyes of Ag” to “The Brain of Ag” by integrating more data sources into our platform and broadening the list of products we offer beyond pests and diseases. Our immediate priorities include focusing on certain markets – Canada and the Netherlands, and tomato crops to get significant market share for the segment and then replicate it for the other regions and crops.

What role do you see emerging technologies, like robotics or IoT, playing in Fermata’s future innovations?

I believe that advancements in robotics and IoT will bring huge value to Fermata, because all these companies are our potential partners. We are looking forward to seeing both new ways to collect data as well as automated solutions to move through the facility and use fewer sensors and cameras to achieve the same goals.

What’s next for Fermata? Are there specific crops, regions, or technologies you are particularly excited to explore in the coming years?

In 2025 we will be focused on tomato producers mainly in Canada and the Netherlands, but following that we aim to expand our services to other vegetables like cucumbers and peppers, then strawberries and grapes. I hope that we will enter global markets with the new crops at the end of this year and in 2026. Regarding technologies, our plan is to go beyond pests and diseases into predicting the yield, assessing the efficiency of pollination, and many other exciting tasks where farmers will appreciate the help of AI.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit Fermata.

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Biotech seeds are transforming agriculture

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Breaking the Cycle of Late Blight: How Biotech Potatoes are Revolutionizing Farming in Kenya

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How Biotech and AI are Revolutionizing Industries Biotechnology (biotech) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are two rapidly advancing fields that are transforming various industries. Biotech involves using living organisms or biological systems to develop new products and technologies, while AI refers to the development of intelligent machines that can think and learn like humans. The Connection…

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Introducing MIT HEALS, a life sciences initiative to address pressing health challenges

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/introducing-mit-heals-a-life-sciences-initiative-to-address-pressing-health-challenges/

Introducing MIT HEALS, a life sciences initiative to address pressing health challenges

At MIT, collaboration between researchers working in the life sciences and engineering is a frequent occurrence. Under a new initiative launched last week, the Institute plans to strengthen and expand those collaborations to take on some of the most pressing health challenges facing the world.

The new MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative, or MIT HEALS, will bring together researchers from all over the Institute to find new solutions to challenges in health care. HEALS will draw on MIT’s strengths in life sciences and other fields, including artificial intelligence and chemical and biological engineering, to accelerate progress in improving patient care.

“As a source of new knowledge, of new tools and new cures, and of the innovators and the innovations that will shape the future of biomedicine and health care, there is just no place like MIT,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth said at a launch event last Wednesday in Kresge Auditorium. “Our goal with MIT HEALS is to help inspire, accelerate, and deliver solutions, at scale, to some of society’s most urgent and intractable health challenges.”

The launch event served as a day-long review of MIT’s historical impact in the life sciences and a preview of what it hopes to accomplish in the future.

“The talent assembled here has produced some truly towering accomplishments. But also — and, I believe, more importantly — you represent a deep well of creative potential for even greater impact,” Kornbluth said.

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, who addressed the filled auditorium, spoke of her excitement about the new initiative, emphasizing that “MIT’s leadership and the work that you do are more important than ever.”

“One of things as governor that I really appreciate is the opportunity to see so many of our state’s accomplished scientists and bright minds come together, work together, and forge a new commitment to improving human life,” Healey said. “It’s even more exciting when you think about this convening to think about all the amazing cures and treatments and discoveries that will result from it. I’m proud to say, and I really believe this, this is something that could only happen in Massachusetts. There’s no place that has the ecosystem that we have here, and we must fight hard to always protect that and to nurture that.”

A history of impact

MIT has a long history of pioneering new fields in the life sciences, as MIT Institute Professor Phillip Sharp noted in his keynote address. Fifty years ago, MIT’s Center for Cancer Research was born, headed by Salvador Luria, a molecular biologist and a 1975 Nobel laureate.

That center helped to lead the revolutions in molecular biology, and later recombinant DNA technology, which have had significant impacts on human health. Research by MIT Professor Robert Weinberg and others identifying cancer genes has led the development of targeted drugs for cancer, including Herceptin and Gleevec.

In 2007, the Center for Cancer Research evolved into the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, whose faculty members are divided evenly between the School of Science and the School of Engineering, and where interdisciplinary collaboration is now the norm.

While MIT has long been a pioneer in this kind of collaborative health research, over the past several years, MIT’s visiting committees reported that there was potential to further enhance those collaborations, according to Nergis Mavalvala, dean of MIT’s School of Science.

“One of the very strong themes that emerged was that there’s an enormous hunger among our colleagues to collaborate more. And not just within their disciplines and within their departments, but across departmental boundaries, across school boundaries, and even with the hospitals and the biotech sector,” Mavalvala told MIT News.

To explore whether MIT could be doing more to encourage interdisciplinary research in the life sciences, Mavalvala and Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the School of Engineering and MIT’s chief innovation and strategy officer, appointed a faculty committee called VITALS (Vision to Integrate, Translate and Advance Life Sciences).

That committee was co-chaired by Tyler Jacks, the David H. Koch Professor of Biology at MIT and a member and former director of the Koch Institute, and Kristala Jones Prather, head of MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering.

“We surveyed the faculty, and for many people, the sense was that they could do more if there were improved mechanisms for interaction and collaboration. Not that those don’t exist — everybody knows that we have a highly collaborative environment at MIT, but that we could do even more if we had some additional infrastructure in place to facilitate bringing people together, and perhaps providing funding to initiate collaborative projects,” Jacks said before last week’s launch.

These efforts will build on and expand existing collaborative structures. MIT is already home to a number of institutes that promote collaboration across disciplines, including not only the Koch Institute but also the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.

“We have some great examples of crosscutting work around MIT, but there’s still more opportunity to bring together faculty and researchers across the Institute,” Chandrakasan said before the launch event. “While there are these great individual pieces, we can amplify those while creating new collaborations.”

Supporting science

In her opening remarks on Wednesday, Kornbluth announced several new programs designed to support researchers in the life sciences and help promote connections between faculty at MIT, surrounding institutions and hospitals, and companies in the Kendall Square area.

“A crucial part of MIT HEALS will be finding ways to support, mentor, connect, and foster community for the very best minds, at every stage of their careers,” she said.

With funding provided by Noubar Afeyan PhD ’87, an executive member of the MIT Corporation and founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, MIT HEALS will offer fellowships for graduate students interested in exploring new directions in the life sciences.

Another key component of MIT HEALS will be the new Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub, which will focus on development of medical treatments specifically for children. This program, established with a gift from the Charles H. Hood Foundation, will be led by Elazer Edelman, a cardiologist and the Edward J. Poitras Professor in Medical Engineering and Science at MIT.

“Currently, the major market incentives are for medical innovations intended for adults — because that’s where the money is. As a result, children are all too often treated with medical devices and therapies that don’t meet their needs, because they’re simply scaled-down versions of the adult models,” Kornbluth said.

As another tool to help promising research projects get off the ground, MIT HEALS will include a grant program known as the MIT-MGB Seed Program. This program, which will fund joint research projects between MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital/Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is being launched with support from Analog Devices, to establish the Analog Devices, Inc. Fund for Health and Life Sciences.

Additionally, the Biswas Family Foundation is providing funding for postdoctoral fellows, who will receive four-year appointments to pursue collaborative health sciences research. The details of the fellows program will be announced in spring 2025.

“One of the things we have learned through experience is that when we do collaborative work that is cross-disciplinary, the people who are actually crossing disciplinary boundaries and going into multiple labs are students and postdocs,” Mavalvala said prior to the launch event. “The trainees, the younger generation, are much more nimble, moving between labs, learning new techniques and integrating new ideas.”

Revolutions

Discussions following the release of the VITALS committee report identified seven potential research areas where new research could have a big impact: AI and life science, low-cost diagnostics, neuroscience and mental health, environmental life science, food and agriculture, the future of public health and health care, and women’s health. However, Chandrakasan noted that research within HEALS will not be limited to those topics.

“We want this to be a very bottom-up process,” he told MIT News. “While there will be a few areas like AI and life sciences that we will absolutely prioritize, there will be plenty of room for us to be surprised on those innovative, forward-looking directions, and we hope to be surprised.”

At the launch event, faculty members from departments across MIT shared their work during panels that focused on the biosphere, brains, health care, immunology, entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence, translation, and collaboration. The program, which was developed by Amy Keating, head of the Department of Biology, and Katharina Ribbeck, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Biological Engineering, also included a spoken-word performance by Victory Yinka-Banjo, an MIT senior majoring in computer science and molecular biology.

In her performance, called “Systems,” Yinka-Banjo urged the audience to “zoom out,” look at systems in their entirety, and pursue collective action.

“To be at MIT is to contribute to an era of infinite impact. It is to look beyond the microscope, zooming out to embrace the grander scope. To be at MIT is to latch onto hope so that in spite of a global pandemic, we fight and we cope. We fight with science and policy across clinics, academia, and industry for the betterment of our planet, for our rights, for our health,” she said.

In a panel titled “Revolutions,” Douglas Lauffenburger, the Ford Professor of Engineering and one of the founders of MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering, noted that engineers have been innovating in medicine since the 1950s, producing critical advances such as kidney dialysis, prosthetic limbs, and sophisticated medical imaging techniques.

MIT launched its program in biological engineering in 1998, and it became a full-fledged department in 2005. The department was founded based on the concept of developing new approaches to studying biology and developing potential treatments based on the new advances being made in molecular biology and genomics.

“Those two revolutions laid the foundation for a brand new kind of engineering that was not possible before them,” Lauffenburger said.

During that panel, Jacks and Ruth Lehmann, director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, outlined several interdisciplinary projects underway at the Koch Institute and the Whitehead Institute. Those projects include using AI to analyze mammogram images and detect cancer earlier, engineering drought-resistant plants, and using CRISPR to identify genes involved in toxoplasmosis infection.

These examples illustrate the potential impact that can occur when “basic science meets translational science,” Lehmann said.

“I’m really looking forward to HEALS further enlarging the interactions that we have, and I think the possibilities for science, both at a mechanistic level and understanding the complexities of health and the planet, are really great,” she said.

The importance of teamwork

To bring together faculty and students with common interests and help spur new collaborations, HEALS plans to host workshops on different health-related topics. A faculty committee is now searching for a director for HEALS, who will coordinate these efforts.

Another important goal of the HEALS initiative, which was the focus of the day’s final panel discussion, is enhancing partnerships with Boston-area hospitals and biotech companies.

“There are many, many different forms of collaboration,” said Anne Klibanski, president and CEO of Mass General Brigham. “Part of it is the people. You bring the people together. Part of it is the ideas. But I have found certainly in our system, the way to get the best and the brightest people working together is to give them a problem to solve. You give them a problem to solve, and that’s where you get the energy, the passion, and the talent working together.”

Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT and a member of the Koch Institute, noted the importance of tackling fundamental challenges without knowing exactly where they will lead. Langer, trained as a chemical engineer, began working in biomedical research in the 1970s, when most of his engineering classmates were going into jobs in the oil industry.

At the time, he worked with Judah Folkman at Boston Children’s Hospital on the idea of developing drugs that would starve tumors by cutting off their blood supply. “It took many, many years before those would [reach patients],” he says. “It took Genentech doing great work, building on some of the things we did that would lead to Avastin and many other drugs.”

Langer has spent much of his career developing novel strategies for delivering molecules, including messenger RNA, into cells. In 2010, he and Afeyan co-founded Moderna to further develop mRNA technology, which was eventually incorporated into mRNA vaccines for Covid.

“The important thing is to try to figure out what the applications are, which is a team effort,” Langer said. “Certainly when we published those papers in 1976, we had obviously no idea that messenger RNA would be important, that Covid would even exist. And so really it ends up being a team effort over the years.”

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‘One of the most infamous modern-day monopolies is the biotech agricultural company Monsanto. The company specializes in environmentally toxic, genetically modified crops and seeds, and utilizes patents to dominate seed markets. In India, 95 percent of cottonseed is controlled by Monsanto, as Indian companies have been locked into joint ventures and licensing arrangements for the last couple of decades. Every patented seed is the "intellectual property" of Monsanto, entitling them to royalties, thereby raising the costs of seeds.’

‘Perhaps most shockingly, these patented seeds have come to include "gene use restriction technology" — seeds that will not produce viable offspring seeds. In this way farmers are forced into buying new seeds every year, rather than harvesting them out of the previous year's crops. The swelling of Indian farmers' debt — along with increasing farmer suicides — are a product of what Indian environmentalist and ecofeminist Vandana Shiva has dubbed Monsanto's "seeds of suicide."’

-Hadas Thier, A People’s Guide to Capitalism