One day, about a year ago, I gathered my staff together and asked them what they would like to be able to boast about five years from now and the answer I got back was as simple as it was passionate: They want to be able to say they helped end hunger.
Thanks to our founder, Dieter Mulitze, our software is in a position to do that by providing plant breeders, crop researchers and agronomists around the world with the tools they need to improve food sustainability though the development of more resilient crops that deliver increased yields and reduce food waste.
That came about organically. Dieter was working as a cereal breeder in Morocco in the late 1980s, a time when most plant breeders were still recording their data in notebooks they brought with them into the field. Needless to say, plant breeding programs generate massive amounts of data and breeders often found themselves trying to organize all of it using large paper spreadsheets. It was time consuming and slowed innovation. Dieter wanted a better way to manage and analyze his data, so he set about writing a program that gave him the tools he needed. A chance encounter on a plane in the late 1980s convinced him that other plant breeders would benefit from those same tools and, in 1990, Agronomix Software was born.
The data analysis necessary for field crop breeding is complex and over the 30 years that’s followed, Dieter has overseen a team of experienced plant breeders and software developers who together implement improvements and additions to the software that are designed to meet the diverse needs of plant breeders across the globe.
There’s more we can do. It hasn’t escaped our notice that 95% of plant breeders in South America currently use Microsoft Excel, which lacks many of the critical tools breeders need to optimize the management and analysis of their data, inventory seeds, increase their research productivity and assist them in quickly selecting the best possible varieties for their region.
The environment for growing crops for many countries in the southern hemisphere is a lot harsher than it is in the northern hemisphere. Plant breeders in LATAM need access to tools that allow them to efficiently develop regionally optimized crops that deliver the resiliency and higher yields that are key to ending hunger both regionally and globally.
Delivering those tools is a goal our team members have set for themselves and one they come to work every single day in an effort to achieve.
