Google's Moonshot Lab Is Now in the Strawberry-Counting Business 11
A partnership with Driscoll's exemplifies a shift toward more pedestrian projects with actual commercial applications. From a report: When Deb Menicos walks a strawberry field, she doesn't just look at the berries. Menicos, who holds a Ph.D. in plant breeding from Ohio State University and works as a senior scientist at Driscoll's, will often find herself counting leaves and examining the small stalks protruding from the base of the plant. These parts, known as trusses, are important because they're where the flowers and berries grow. "We want a small plant, with compact leaves and trusses poking out -- not too long, because we don't want them to touch the dirt," she says. Developing a new berry variety at Driscoll's takes at least five years. It begins with a crop of 25,000 genetically distinct plants that grow in the company's breeding field near its headquarters in Watsonville, California. Menicos and her colleagues winnow that down first to 250 plants, then clone them and replant them, narrowing the field until they have a winner.
The goal is to make the most and tastiest berries while minimizing the cost of fertilizers, pesticides and labor. Today, determining which genetic attributes translate into the easiest plants to harvest comes down to "observations and feelings," Menicos says. "We want to have better data, more quantitative data. And that's where Mineral comes in." Mineral is another way of saying Google. The closely guarded project grew out of an effort by the company's famous innovation lab, X, to use cameras and machine learning to help farmers make better decisions. Working with Driscoll's, Mineral created large unmanned rovers -- the vehicles are a little bigger than a Smart car and are packed with sensors and cameras -- that drive up and down crop rows collecting data that tell farmers which plants are thriving and which aren't.
This is known as "phenotyping," and it's a huge challenge for farmers, says Elliott Grant, Mineral's general manager. "The price of genetic modeling went down to pretty much nothing, but you still don't know what the plant does when you engineer it," he says. "Breeders and crop researchers are still going into the fields with tape measures and notepads." [...] Besides at Driscoll's, Google is testing versions of its agricultural technology with more than a dozen other companies including Syngenta, the Chinese state-owned agricultural giant that develops seeds, insecticides and herbicides for staples such as soybeans, corn and wheat.
The goal is to make the most and tastiest berries while minimizing the cost of fertilizers, pesticides and labor. Today, determining which genetic attributes translate into the easiest plants to harvest comes down to "observations and feelings," Menicos says. "We want to have better data, more quantitative data. And that's where Mineral comes in." Mineral is another way of saying Google. The closely guarded project grew out of an effort by the company's famous innovation lab, X, to use cameras and machine learning to help farmers make better decisions. Working with Driscoll's, Mineral created large unmanned rovers -- the vehicles are a little bigger than a Smart car and are packed with sensors and cameras -- that drive up and down crop rows collecting data that tell farmers which plants are thriving and which aren't.
This is known as "phenotyping," and it's a huge challenge for farmers, says Elliott Grant, Mineral's general manager. "The price of genetic modeling went down to pretty much nothing, but you still don't know what the plant does when you engineer it," he says. "Breeders and crop researchers are still going into the fields with tape measures and notepads." [...] Besides at Driscoll's, Google is testing versions of its agricultural technology with more than a dozen other companies including Syngenta, the Chinese state-owned agricultural giant that develops seeds, insecticides and herbicides for staples such as soybeans, corn and wheat.
Re: (Score:2)
Let me guess: she does it while wearing a HazMat* suit because of all the pesticides?
Driscoll's does offer organically grown strawberries. If that's what you want, they will sell them to you.
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Perhaps you should learn a thing or two about pesticide use before spouting non-sense. "Organic" produce uses more and more dangerous pesticides, it makes no sense for farmers to waste expensive things, or risk wasting an entire crop.
Re: Let me guess. (Score:1)
I'd like to give a shout-out to all the Monsanto shills out there...
Apologies; I should have issued a preemptive apology to all who'd resemble that remark.
rice (Score:2)
What About CRISPR-CAS9 ? (Score:1)
Seems to me that a little genetic tweaking would be more effective.
This is definitely old tech.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with strawberry breeding (Score:3)
I can't read TFA (paywalled), but the problem with strawberry breeding is that the genetic variability is very low -- just a handful of original genotypes were used in the vast majority of breeding programs, especially in California (https://9lib.co/article/breeding-potential-of-the-wild-strawberries.zgw6wrjn). A large amount of pesticides are used (again, especially in California) because of disease and pest problems. There was a USDA program to bring in a lot of new breeding material from wild strawberries (Oregon State University) about 10 years ago and I know Driscolls was involved. If Discolls has 25,000 phenotypes, it sounds like they've incorporated the new genetic material from wild populations. This could be a successful project.
Local strawberries in/from Puyallup, Washington (Score:1)
Counting berries... (Score:1)