InnerPlant, a California-based agtech startup, has announced a breakthrough that could fundamentally alter how farmers detect and manage crop disease. By successfully demonstrating the world’s first real-time detection of fungal infection in soybeans, the company has opened a new frontier in precision agriculture. This innovation allows growers to identify early signs of infection long before visible symptoms emerge, creating the opportunity to act swiftly and protect crop yields. InnerPlant’s achievement signals a shift toward proactive, data-driven farming that could simultaneously boost profitability and sustainability. The company’s trailblazing work is guided by CEO Shely Aronov, recently named one of the top 25 female founders/CEOs in agriculture technology, reflecting the visionary leadership driving this transformation.
The company’s technology builds on its proprietary use of genetically enhanced plants that emit detectable signals under stress conditions. InnerPlant, engineers specific soybean traits to naturally produce optical signals when they experience physiological stress, such as infection from fungal pathogens. These signals, which are invisible to the naked eye, can be picked up by specialized sensors mounted on equipment like tractors, drones, and eventually satellites. The advantage of this approach lies in precision, scalability, and timing. Farmers no longer need to wait for discoloration, wilting, or tissue death to recognize infection. Instead, they can receive an alert as soon as pathogen activity begins, even at the cellular level. Early detection translates directly into higher odds of a successful intervention, whether through targeted fungicide treatments, precision irrigation adjustments, or novel biological applications.
According to USDA and industry studies, fungal infections cause billions of dollars in yield losses worldwide each year. Loss estimates in soybeans alone often run into hundreds of millions annually across major producing regions. These diseases also pose challenges for input management. Farmers often prophylactically spray fungicides during high-risk weather windows, even without confirmed disease presence in their fields, leading to both economic inefficiency and environmental concerns. InnerPlant’s system offers an alternative path, knowing exactly when and where infection begins, allowing farmers to replace broad, prophylactic applications with data-driven, targeted sprays. This reduces input costs, lowers the risk of fungicide resistance development, and minimizes chemical runoff into adjacent ecosystems.
The underlying science behind InnerPlant’s innovation involves engineering plants with “reporter proteins” that serve as biological indicators of specific stresses. When pathogens invade, the plant activates a response pathway that produces these proteins, which in turn create an optical signal that can be read using existing sensor platforms. The technical breakthrough here lies not only in the genetic engineering but also in creating a stable, field-ready signal that remains reliable under varying environments. In field trials, InnerPlant demonstrated that infected soybeans began producing detectable signals well before visible symptoms appeared, sometimes as much as a week earlier. In the biological arms race between plants and pathogens, that week can be the difference between contained, treatable infections and widespread yield loss.
Traditional scouting methods rely heavily on visual signs and weather models, making them reactive by nature. With InnerPlant’s platform, however, fields essentially “communicate” stress signals directly to the farmer. This empowers decision-making based on real-time evidence rather than probability models. The company envisions a future where every field becomes a living sensor network, continuously streaming biological data to inform agronomic strategies.
The commercial viability of such a technology also lies in its flexibility. InnerPlant’s signals can be detected by multiple data collection platforms, from satellites to ground equipment, meaning farmers don’t require a whole new infrastructure to benefit. Partnerships with equipment manufacturers and agricultural service providers could allow InnerPlant traits to integrate seamlessly into existing precision agriculture ecosystems. Imagine a sprayer automatically adjusting its application in real time based on signal feedback from infected plant zones, or a drone mapping disease spread through infrared signal capture. This sort of integration drives scalability while lowering adoption barriers. Farmers are outcome-driven, and when early detection translates directly into higher yields and reduced chemical bills, demand will naturally rise.
Beyond soybeans, the potential for expansion is enormous. The general principle of real-time stress signaling could be applied to other major crops like corn, wheat, and cotton. Beyond fungal disease, reporter traits might eventually signal nutrient deficiencies, insect pressure, or water stress. The vision is of a holistic sensing platform that allows crops to constantly communicate their health to growers, enabling a shift from reactive agriculture to predictive and responsive systems. Such an evolution would parallel the transformation that occurred in medicine with the rise of early diagnostics, catching disease early radically changed outcomes, and the same could hold true for crops.
InnerPlant’s milestone is not just a technical achievement but also a symbolic one for the agtech sector. For years, talk of “farming with data” has revolved around weather prediction, satellite imagery, and soil sensors. While valuable, these external data streams never truly captured the direct biological signals from plants themselves. Now, InnerPlant has shown that the crops can serve as the most accurate source of truth. This closes the gap between data and biology, creating an entirely new data category: plant-native signals. I’m told that InnerPlant’s network covered 50,000 acres across the Midwest in 2025 and is scaling to over half a million acres in 2026 through resale agreements with key CropLife 100 agricultural retailers. Learn more at InnerPlant’s website HERE. (Source: soybeanresearchinfo, farm-equipment, InnerPlant)
