COVER STORY
CURATED CROPS
Optimising cotton crops with AI will boost resiliency during the production process, as Saskia Henn discovers
Farmers are experiencing a compression that could affect every aspect of the supply chain B
y the time crops have landed on kitchen tables, or become infused in cosmetics bottles or woven through shirts, they
will have changed hands throughout the supply chain countless times. Once crops are ready to leave the
soil, they begin their journey from the harvester to grain silos, marketers and processing and packaging facilities, with each step along the way bumping up the fi nal price and contributing to emissions. The common use of pesticides
occasionally adds an extra step to the process as well. Some supply chains may include a washing procedure to rid the crops of pesticide residue. Crops requiring refrigeration
may also face further diff iculties, depending on the temperature technology used and the distance between facilities. Overall, a crop’s journey is a
tumultuous one, it needs to be part of a substantial yield and, more importantly, comprise high quality cotton to withstand the challenging trip.
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CROPS AND CLIMATE CHANGE It’s no secret that climate change is threatening crop quality. At the mercy of increasingly volatile conditions, tomatoes bruise and shrivel under the sun, cotton’s fi brous elasticity weakens without water and the biodiversity loss from rubber plantations becomes less and less justifi able. Climate change’s rapid
encroachment also means that currently unproblematic locations could look completely diff erent very soon, potentially no longer able to support the same crops as before. To preserve the reliability of crop
supply chains, the crops themselves must be able to withstand increasingly demanding and unpredictable conditions so they can survive the many steps from the fi eld to the consumers. But what if there was a way to
increase crop quality as well as simultaneously optimise supply chain steps? That’s where plant biology company Avalo AI comes in.
ABOUT AVALO Avalo AI’s machine learning capabilities identify the genetic components of desirable crop phenotypes and amplify them through selective breeding. Built on the fundamental practice of
crossbreeding, the company uses data- driven insights to enable more precise selections by breeders more quickly. Since the algorithm can predict the performance of a seed without needing to grow it, the process of obtaining desirable traits such as heat and drought tolerance is accelerated by up to 70%. “The problems of farming are
universal in that, just being in the industry that they are in, they’re getting squeezed from both sides,” says Avalo co-founder and CEO Brendan Collins. With input costs rising while
customers seek cheaper end products, farmers are experiencing a compression that could aff ect every aspect of the supply chain.
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