Communicating With Plants: Shely Aronov explores the future of biotechnology in farming
By Kristin Platts
In the decade and a half since she moved to the U.S, Shely Aronov has made a significant impact in the world of AgTech. Born in Israel, Aronov moved to California to earn her Master of Business Administration at Stanford University when she was 26. Now 40, the entrepreneur is the co-founder and CEO of InnerPlant, a California-based biotech company that develops living plant sensors that aim to help farming be more efficient.
Growing up in the city of Rishon LeZion, Israel, Aronov’s initial career goals had nothing to do with agriculture. What she did have was a passion for business. After graduating from Stanford, she pursued a number of ventures, including establishing a successful hummus company. She chose to stay in the Bay Area, realizing it was the ideal place to build a company in the realm of tech.
Since its launch in 2018, InnerPlant has seen a number of milestones. Most recently, in September 2022, John Deere announced they were investing $16 million in the company. InnerPlant also has built a unique client partnership through InnerCircle, a membership-based community of farmers whose voices and opinions contribute to the ongoing advancement of InnerPlant’s technology.
Although Aronov does much of her work from home these days, she stays linked to her team at the InnerPlant lab in Davis, California. The ability to connect with her team, clients, and investors remotely is something she said works well for the company.
Aronov sat down with us in September to talk about what her company is doing and what it is like being a woman in the growing field of AgTech.
Q: How did you get into the field of agriculture and AgTech?
A: I wanted to do something that was technology oriented, farming oriented, and can have an impact on a lot of acres. I always focused on row crops, big crops, and technologies that are essentially a win-win for the farmers of the world, so that there is never a conflict.
Q: What does InnerPlant specialize in, what is your mission, and how many people do you manage?
A: We are currently a team of 18 full-time people and are going to grow to about 40 to 45 people by next year. Our mission, our vision is, how do you make farming systems that are more efficient, more productive, and more sustainable? How do we make it easier to farm in a way that’s better to farm? Our path toward that starts with seed technology.
Q: How do the biosensors you use to communicate with plants work?
A: When plants are attacked or and experience stress, they react to protect themselves. It’s a biological reaction. For example, if a plant is eaten by bugs, it’s going to start to produce a compound in its leaves to make it taste bad. What we do is, we know those sequences of stress. Once we know the reaction of the plant, we take that reaction and use biosensors to “tell” the plant to produce a new protein when reacting to stress. That protein will then fluoresce. So, if a plant is reacting to the insect pressure, it will start producing a green fluorescent protein that creates an optical signal that’s emitted from the leaves. That optical signal is then picked up from a satellite, to a drone, to the tractor. We can’t see it by the naked eye, but we can see it with optical equipment The technology allows plants to tell us what they need and when.
Q: Can you tell us about InnerCircle?
A: We decided to start with this community because we didn’t have a product yet as our new seed offering – InnerSoy™ – won’t be ready until 2024. At the same time, we didn’t want to do biotech development in a silo without talking to our customers. We wanted to find a way to approach them early and bring them into the conversation. For now, our product is essentially being part of InnerSoy’s development, the InnerCircle community, and InnerPlant, and being able to influence what it is they’re going to receive.
Q. Who can join InnerCircle and what benefits do they get from joining?
A: InnerCircle is open to any interested farmer. Members of InnerCircle contribute their knowledge in selecting important features for InnerSoy, including, germplasm, stress factors, detection methodology and frequency, and retail channels. Members also will enjoy early access to our ground-breaking seed technology, discounts, exclusive access to events, industry insights, and fun swag.
Q: How is the recent John Deere investment impacting InnerPlant?
A: Our successful Series A gives us the support to move forward with our InnerSoy field trials in 2023 and a soft launch in 2024. John Deere leading the round validates our approach to digitizing crop stress and the potential value it has for plant-by-plant management.
Q: Have you ever faced any hurdles or challenges because you are a woman?
A: Am I exhausted by being the only woman in the room? Yes. And I often get asked about fundraising. I do think it’s more challenging for women. I now understand why. It’s because of the way the world is structured and historical roles of women and men. Men get more questions about opportunities; women get more questions about risk. When you’re fundraising, you don’t want to be talking about risk, you want to be talking about opportunities. It is our job, then, to be prepared for the risk questions and find a way to make them into opportunity questions.
Q: What do you think it would it take to get more women into the field of AgTech, especially when it comes to women of color?
A: I’m trying to pay a lot more attention to bringing diversity into our team. It dawned on me that what we need to do is take more time … we need to have a longer process and go after the women and minorities who know they are the right person for the role, not just those who I think are right for the role. If it means hiring slower, then we just have to take more time and make it a focus. It has to be a priority.
Q: What advice would you give a girl or young woman interested in agriculture or AgTech?
A: Let’s talk about it as entrepreneurship toward creating positive change in the world. For us, we care a lot about the environment; other people care about other things. There are problems to solve, there’s no lack of them. A lot of people are daunted by that, so I think that’s where people in general, and maybe even more so, women, just feel like this is too overwhelming. Too many people feel we cannot make an impact. My approach to it is if you don’t try, then you fail. If you do try, you may fail or you may succeed. Either way, it’s going to be better. If enough people try, eventually some will succeed.
Amy Wu is an award-winning journalist with a specialty in writing about food, agriculture and innovation. She is the founder of From Farms to Incubators a media and events initiative that using storytelling to champion women in the food systems. Amy is moderating a panel at the 2022 Indoor Agtech Innovation Summit.