It’s early July and you’re deciding if you should spray fungicide. You walk through the field closest to the barn and see a few tiny disease lesions. Should you invest another $25 per acre and arrange for spraying fungicide now, or wait another week and check again?

How much would it be worth if someone could make this decision process easier? Not possible? Kyle Mohler, Lebanon, Ind., thinks it is. Through his company, Insignum AgTech, he is developing technology that could be bred into corn hybrids to alert you if disease is developing. You could know about a week before visible symptoms appear.

How? Plants would “talk,” with leaves showing a purple cast if disease is developing. You can’t buy corn hybrids that react quickly to disease infection by purpling today. But Mohler hopes you’ll be able to in the future.

Mohler read about the purple pigment native to corn. Then, his team discovered how to insert the pigment into a gene that reacts when diseases invade. The initial process involves GMO technology; that means research thus far is in isolated plots governed by strict U.S. EPA rules.

However, the next generation of the gene that Insignum AgTech will bring to market would be moved into hybrids through gene editing, not a GMO process, so the final product would not be a GMO.

“We’ve proven that the concept works, and this year, we collaborated with Beck’s to introduce it into a wide range of genetics,” Mohler says. “Each hybrid exhibited purpling as expected if disease was present. Demonstrating that it would work in various genetic packages was a key step forward.”

Abby Horlacher, an independent consultant with Nickel Plate Consulting, tested hybrids throughout the season. She concluded that in the 2023 plots, purpling developed, on average, about one week before typical signs of disease appeared, Mohler reports.

“To be practical, purpling must be visible from the air, so a drone with a camera could detect it,” Mohler explains. “We believe that’s doable, and we also believe we can use this same technology in other applications.”

Following a dream

Mohler traded farm fields for research labs after graduating from Purdue. He earned a doctorate at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland before returning to Purdue as a postdoctoral research assistant. Though he wore a lab coat, he was still a farm boy at heart. Soon, he was so engrossed with the day-to-day dilemmas his dad, Allen, and brother, Justin, faced on the farm that he began visualizing how science could make their life easier.

“One big concern each summer was whether to spray fungicides on corn,” Mohler says. “By the time disease showed up in corn, it might be difficult to get fungicide applied.”

Mohler soon came up with a possible solution. Why not tie the purple pigment native to corn to a gene triggered when disease attacks? That is the basis for Insignum AgTech.

Turning the concept into reality means jumping through hoops. Mohler knew the process would be long, working through EPA regulations.

“What I didn’t realize was how much time I would spend raising capital to keep the project going,” he says. “That is my No. 1 challenge. People in the Midwest aren’t as quick to invest in startup ventures as people on the coasts. Right now, though, I’m excited that we’ve secured funding for another year.”

Mohler intends to turn his idea into reality, simplifying the fungicide decision for farmers everywhere. Follow his progress at insignumagtech.com.

Here are two more burgeoning technologies that could change the way you farm:

Fleets of robots. When Dennis Bowman tells someone he’s going to get his cover crop seeder out of his trunk, he gets funny looks. But he’s not kidding. He can tote a cover crop-seeding robot in the trunk of his car.

“I can fill its hopper with 100 pounds of seed, and it can cover over 3 acres, at 30 pounds per acre,” Bowman says. “Its battery provides three to four hours of run time.”

Bowman, an Extension specialist with the University of Illinois, envisions a fleet of robots spreading cover crops between standing corn rows.

“The developers spread 200 acres on a university farm this fall,” he says. “The idea is to operate several of these small, autonomous robots at once, perhaps in a custom- or service-model-type arrangement.”

Originally developed at U of I by Girish Chowdhary and Chinmay Soman, the robots are the basis for EarthSense, a startup company in a U of I incubator program.

“The goal is getting cost down to around $5,000 per unit,” Bowman says. “They can also spread fertilizer.”

Learn more at earthsense.co.

Precise spraying. Today, Precision AI is all about attaining maximum performance against weeds with aerial applications. In the future, the company hopes to map weeds precisely and attack them from the air like the John Deere See & Spray system does on the ground today.

“It’s in the prototype stage,” explains Jessica Day of Precision AI. “Our weed mapping is at 98% accuracy on some crops, and we are testing precision target spraying from our drones within milliseconds of imaging.”

Based on prototype testing results, drones will not have to land so weed mapping data can be input into other equipment. Targeted weed spraying can happen from the air in real time. Artificial intelligence is the driver that makes this possible, Day notes. More testing is needed. Follow progress at precision.ai/technology.