Google’s innovation lab, X, known for its ambitious “moonshot” projects, unveiled its latest graduate this week: Heritable Agriculture. This data-driven startup seeks to transform the way crops are grown, tackling the complex global challenges of agriculture with the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

Heritable Agriculture’s core mission revolves around improving crop production while addressing the massive environmental impact of traditional farming. As the company points out, plants are highly efficient, solar-powered, carbon-negative systems that rely on sunlight and water. However, agriculture accounts for approximately 25% of human-made greenhouse gas emissions, depletes vital groundwater resources, and contributes to soil erosion and water pollution through the use of pesticides and fertilizers.

The newly independent startup is leveraging massive datasets to reimagine farming practices, aiming to optimize plant growth with cutting-edge AI tools. While collecting data is the easier part, the true challenge lies in turning that data into actionable insights for growers, helping modernize an industry that has been in practice for over 12,000 years.

Heritable Agriculture was founded by Brad Zamft, a physics PhD with a background at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and TL Biolabs. After joining Google X in 2018, Zamft became the project lead for what would evolve into Heritable. His goal was to build a scalable solution for plant optimization that could match Google’s business scale. “The idea of how we get better at optimizing plants stuck with me,” Zamft explains.

Through the power of machine learning, Heritable Agriculture focuses on analyzing plant genomes to identify genetic combinations that can improve crop yields. The company aims to develop plants with climate-friendly traits such as lower water requirements, higher carbon storage in roots and soil, and increased resistance to climate change. These insights are tested on thousands of plants, cultivated in a specialized growth chamber at X’s Bay Area headquarters and field sites in California, Nebraska, and Wisconsin.

While Heritable’s work is rooted in traditional plant breeding, Zamft emphasizes that gene editing, such as CRISPR technology, is not currently part of the company’s roadmap. Instead, they focus on more conventional methods of crossbreeding plants to enhance their traits. However, gene editing could eventually play a role in the company’s long-term vision of creating “programmable” plants.

Currently, Heritable is focused on commercializing its technology, though specific timelines or partnerships remain undisclosed. The company has raised seed funding from investors including FTW Ventures, Mythos Ventures, and SVG Ventures, with Google also holding equity in the startup.

With Google X aggressively spinning off companies like Heritable, the startup is well-positioned to advance agricultural practices and offer sustainable solutions to an industry facing increasing environmental challenges.

By Impact Lab