For the founders of Trace Genomics, strawberries are the low-hanging fruit.
The company's cofounders, Diane Wu and Poornima Parameswaran, are borrowing 23andMe's model and applying it to agriculture. For $199, growers—and the suppliers that sell fertilizers and seeds to them—can collect a sample of soil from their crops' roots using a special kit and send it back to Trace's lab for analysis. The company will then share the results of its pathogen panel, which tests the sample for tiny organisms like bacteria, viruses, and fungi that are associated with plant blight. For now, the offering is limited to some 30 diseases affecting strawberries and lettuce.
Image: Flickr user U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jennifer Aldridge
