The National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) has partnered up with agriculture technology company Benson Hill Biosystems to use the power of cloud biology for the creation of new corn hybrids.

The primary goal of the funding and partnership initiative will be to accelerate breeding and development of new corn hybrids utilizing CropOS™. “Our members are telling us loud and clear that they need more choices in the corn marketplace,” said North Dakota farmer Larry Hoffmann who serves as shairman of NCGA’s Corn Productivity & Quality Action Team. “We believe that the CropOS platform offers a fresh approach to leverage big data and technology and foster a more competitive industry.”

The CropOS cognitive engine uses machine learning to grow smarter and more predictive with every experiment and data set. With each additional breeder that takes advantage of the analytical power and machine learning of CropOS, progress in corn breeding has the potential to accelerate significantly, making the industry more responsive to the needs of growers. “The more responsive and competitive the industry is, the better equipped growers will be to sustainably meet demand for increasingly diverse solutions that benefit farms, communities, consumers and our society,” said Benson Hill Co-Founder and CEO Matthew Crisp.

CropOS combines vast amounts of genomic data and expert biological knowledge from public and private sources to pinpoint which plants will produce desired traits and improved performance prior to ever being planted in the field, allowing researchers to bypass multiple generations of experimentation.