Benson Hill Biosystems Launches CropOS™

ST. LOUIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Benson
Hill Biosystems, an agricultural technology company unlocking the
genetic potential of plants, today announced that is has commercially
launched CropOS™, a cognitive engine using cloud biology to empower a
new era of plant genomics innovation. CropOS uses powerful data
analytics and biological knowledge to identify the most promising plant
genetics in weeks instead of multiple growing seasons. Users can
discover and breed tomorrow’s food and fuel crops with more precision
and efficiency by leveraging the cognitive capability of CropOS, which
grows more intelligent with every use and democratizes plant innovation.
“We need to empower more innovators to solve the world’s agricultural
challenges,” said Benson Hill Co-Founder and CEO Matthew Crisp. “By
partnering CropOS with the broader agriculture community, from farmer
co-ops to research institutions to businesses of all sizes, we are
opening up innovation opportunities that were formerly accessible only
to those with the largest and most well advanced research programs.
Given the universal importance of agriculture in our global society,
it’s crucial that we harness the power of cloud biology, and I’m excited
that we are at the forefront of empowering this movement.”
The Transformative Power of Cloud Biology
Agricultural technology is being up-ended by the convergence of big data
analytics, cloud computing, and biological expertise. This emerging
discipline known as Cloud Biology, empowers researchers to solve
formidable agricultural challenges such as increasing the metabolism of
plants to improve crop performance. Formerly a slow and often
cost-prohibitive process constrained by compute availability, barriers
to information and length of growing season, enhancing the genetics of
plants can be greatly accelerated through improved decision support for
breeders and researchers.
“Benson Hill totally changes the game and allows both small and large
companies to improve plant biology faster,” said Dan Watkins, partner at Mercury
Fund, which invested in Benson Hill’s $8M Series A round.
“Previously, only the largest companies or research institutions had the
resources and expertise to do this, and even then, it could take years
to get a research program to market. CropOS represents a uniquely
powerful platform at the intersection of big data, machine learning and
plant biology. Perhaps most impressive is that CropOS has already
demonstrated, in ongoing field trials, that it can drive very
significant increases in yield for major food crops.”
CropOS: Heralding the New Generation of Crops
CropOS enables users to analyze petabytes of genomic data to pinpoint
which seeds will produce desired traits, allowing researchers to bypass
multiple generations of experimentation. Instead of being constrained by
greenhouse space, field plots or growing seasons, users define the
desired result and leverage the power of a cognitive engine to help
determine the genetics most likely to produce it. Desirable biofuel
feedstocks like a higher biomass sorghum plant, for example, or a
superfood like a more nutritious blueberry, can be successfully
identified and advanced to market in a fraction of the time.
The significantly shortened time-to-market for improved crops is driven
by the combination of biological knowledge of plants combined with
genomics information and big data analytics. CropOS uses machine
learning to grow smarter and make better decisions with every data set
and experiment, allowing for increasingly sophisticated research over
time. CropOS does not require coding experience or advanced
computational training, and can be used by any plant breeder or
researcher wishing to employ an advanced decision support tool to
develop improved plant varieties or traits.
To learn more about CropOS, please visit: https://bensonhillbio.com/technology.
About Benson Hill Biosystems
Benson Hill Biosystems is an agricultural technology company that
unlocks the global genetic potential of plants to enhance the
sustainability of food, feed, fiber and fuel production. Benson Hill and
our partners harness natural and novel genetic variation through
breeding, trait development, and genome editing to develop products that
accelerate crop improvement. More information can be found online at www.bensonhillbio.com.