Category: Technology
AgVoice, AgVoice Global
Commercial Launch: October 2021
Launched in mid-October to the Apple App store, AgVoice is the world’s first service that enables precision breeding capabilities just by “speaking your reports” in any field or environment.
Organizations often have difficulty capturing and sharing quality data, which affects all aspects of agriculture and even has reaches into the food industry. AgVoice acts as a voice-to-data capture and an analytic service to help food and agriculture specialists capture actionable insights on the go.
One convenience added? It’s hands free. The phone stays in the field worker’s pocket throughout the day. AgVoice recognizes and picks up agriculture-specific terms, including scientific terms, and works with zero internet connectivity. It’s also user correctable for real-time data accuracy.
AgVoice has contracts with three of the four largest seed companies in the world, whose breeders cover 30% more plot inspections per day while performing up to 400 inspections. AgVoice hopes to transform two-person jobs to a one-person job by delivering 50% improvement in performance and three times faster business decisions.
Awarded a patent in August 2021, AgVoice’s advanced speech technology is first to market in the seed industry and can be scaled to meet any need.
Air-Dryable™ Direct DNA qPCR Plant, Meridian Life Science
Commercial Launch: May 2021
Meridian Life Science’s new Air-Dryable™ Direct DNA qPCR Plant is an inhibitor-tolerant mix designed for direct DNA quantitation from crude plant lysate. It allows highly sensitive qPCR directly on these plant lysates without nucleic acid purification. Not only that, but assays can be dried down and stored at room temperature without affecting the assay’s performance.
Containing excipients and an optimized buffer system, the product is compatible with either oven or air drying.
DNA in edible plants have been the driving force for qPCR technique introductions in plant research — and direct amplification of DNA from plant samples is a fast and convenient technique that avoids the need for time-consuming and expensive nucleic acid extractions prior to qPCR. In addition, Air-Dryable Direct DNA qPCR Plant is the first commercially available mix designed for developing ambient-temperature stable assays for the direct quantitation of DNA from plants.
Customers can therefore save time, reduce costs and control their entire manufacturing workflow while delivering the same or better performance as compared to other assay formats. There’s no need for expensive, time-consuming DNA extraction steps or complicated lyophilization machinery to get highly sensitive reproducible results.
Ampha P20, Amphasys
Commercial Launch: June 2021
Do you need to monitor pollen quality? Are you looking for an instrument for phenotyping of pollen? The Ampha P20 Pollen Analyzer is a fast, easy-to-use and portable technology to make pollen analysis more efficient. With feedback from customers and input from the market, Amphasys worked to develop a product that will revolutionize breeding and seed production.
The pressure on the seed industry to develop high-yielding crops in challenging environments and a changing climate is the No. 1 demand. Ampha P20 is a tool to speed up the breeding process and make seed production more efficient. Its portability allows customers to easily measure pollen viability directly in the field, which is important for crops with a short pollen lifetime such as wheat, corn, and rice.
The ease of use and the automated data analysis makes the Ampha P20 ideal for systematic screening for phenotyping and routine quality control. The instrument can even be operated by untrained users. This is achieved by new, crop-specific microfluidic smart chips. Currently, chips for tomato, pepper, corn, and wheat are available. More applications are in development.
