Founding AgBiome with Eric Ward

Top builders in biotech

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Eric Ward⁠ is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of AgBiome, an agtech company that analyzes crop microbiomes to develop crop protection products & traits. Founded in 2012, AgBiome has no managers; rather, the company uses committees of employees to handle core functions like business development and financials. AgBiome has built a ⁠wide-ranging platform⁠, called Genesis, integrating plant genomics with breeding and gene editing to characterize the plant microbiome to do this. On the tools side, AgBiome has more scalable plant screening methods and a growing database of plant microbiomes. AgBiome’s work creates a pretty large database of microbes (>80K, growing by 10Ks annually) & their effects on crops. On the products side, AgBiome uses these tools to hone in on microbes with a particular activity. Leading to 2 major products: Howler and Theia (both fungicides). With this platform and a series of products, AgBiome is helping growers protect their crops from insects, fungal infections, nematodes, and disease in general.

Eric discusses his career that spans over 3 decades from serving as president of the Two Blades Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to promoting the development of durable disease resistance in crops. Prior to that he was CEO and Co-Founder of Cropsolution, an agriculture chemical discovery company focused on novel fungicides. Eric began his career at Ciba-Geigy (later Novartis, now Syngenta), where he held various positions in research management, ultimately serving as co-president of Novartis Agribusiness Biotechnology Research.

Find it on Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/axial/episodes/Founding-AgBiome-with-Eric-Ward-e267qrv

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