01
The Problem
A Diagnostic Gap in Global
Agriculture
The tools growers rely on today can detect that a plant is stressed, but not why. Disease, drought, nutrients, and insects look identical on an NDVI map — and by the time symptoms are visible to the eye, physiological damage has already occurred and pathogens have spread beyond the treatment window. Across every major growing region, the result is the same: producers manage losses instead of preventing them.
I
Visual Scouting
Manual scouting covers a fraction of total acreage and only detects disease after visible symptom expression — when yield damage has already begun. A scout walking 1,200 acres cannot provide field-wide coverage.
Detects damage after the fact
II
Lab Diagnostics
Accurate — but at $50–$150 per sample, cost-prohibitive for field-wide application. Results arrive on a multi-day lag, too slow to inform within-season management decisions at scale.
$50–$150 per sample · days of lag
III
NDVI / Standard Imagery
Standard drone and satellite imagery detects that a plant is stressed — but cannot identify why. Disease, drought, nutrients, insects all look identical. Critically, NDVI only flags stress after physiological damage is already underway.
Symptom without diagnosis
$220B
