Turning Plants into Living Sensors: Making Farming More Sustainable with Shely Aronov, Founder and CEO of InnerPlant
Shely Aronov, Founder and CEO of InnerPlant, explains how her company uses genetic engineering to turn crops like soybeans into living sensors that signal stress (such as fungal pressure or nitrogen deficiency) via fluorescence. She details the technology's journey from leaf-clip prototypes to a remote sensing model using satellite imagery and hyperspectral cameras to detect these signals from space. Aronov discusses the business strategy of embedding this technology into seeds sold by partners rather than selling directly to farmers, and highlights the critical role of precision application hardware like John Deere's See & Spray in closing the loop on chemical usage.