Electrophysiology: A yield game-changer for Iowa farmer

Despite good weather, yield has not met the expectations of Iowa farmer Ben Pederson some years.

“Before each season starts, we build a house, which is our crop plan,” says Pederson, who farms near Lake Mills. “Despite the furnace being on, the thermostat doesn’t rise. Turns out, we may have had a window open the whole time.”

Closing that window meant considering an alternative to traditional seed treatments.

As the first form of crop protection in modern agriculture, seed treatments are a tool Pederson has used to protect against early-season insects and diseases as well as to promote early-season plant growth. Treatments can also improve yield and grain quality.

“There is no shortage of seed treatment options available out there, so I wasn’t really looking for a new solution,” Pederson says. “It also would have been shortsighted of me to think that we were done affecting crop yield inefficiency in physical ways.”

Enter Bright Yeti. Founded in 2017, the company is using advanced plant electrophysiology to stimulate the ions inside a seed before it goes into the ground, which helps with early-stage vigor and nutrient-use efficiency.

“When I heard about the technology, I realized this could potentially be the next big thing in agriculture,” says Pederson, who has been using the system for two seasons on corn. “So far, I’m impressed not only by what can be seen with the naked eye but in our yields.

“Fast, even emergence, even in challenging soil conditions, was something I noticed right away, which leads to the real reason we add any new product to our system: more yield. Yields have been consistently good across soil types and planting conditions, more so than before we began using Bright Yeti’s electrophysiology-based seed treatment,” he says.

New Strategy to Increase Yield

“Farmers have been looking for new and innovative ways to increase yields without increasing chemical inputs,” says Jacob Cordova, founder and CEO of Bright Yeti. “Rather than just adding more chemicals that need to be mixed in tanks and poured on the ground, we are using electrophysiology to optimize plant performance and yield.”

Electrophysiology is a decades-old science used in the medical industry for instruments such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). An MRI uses ions and the body’s natural magnetic properties to produce detailed images from any part of the body. Ions also exist in plant cells.

While research on plant electrophysiology has demonstrated its dramatic impact on cellular metabolism and yield, its use in agriculture has not been widely commercialized. With the introduction of Bright Yeti’s nutrient ion technology, the science is now being applied to farms.

“Electrophysiology is the next big innovation to hit agriculture, and farmers now have a chemical-free solution that benefits farming and optimizes land value,” says Cordova, who began his career as an engineer on the NASA Orion manned spaceflight program.

Using third-party yield validation trials, the patent pending technology was tested on three farms. Every farm showed an average increase in yield with Bright Yeti, and the overall average yield increase was 15.5 bushels of corn per acre, according to Cordova.

How It Works

When a farmer subscribes to Bright Yeti, the fully automated system is delivered to the farm, so seed can be treated on site. The subscription cost is based on the number of acres grown. Bright Yeti maintains the system the entire time it is on the farm.

“If a farmer knows how to use a ProBox, he can use Bright Yeti. We’ve engineered it so the design is something a farmer is familiar with,” Cordova says.

The components of the technology include an ion chamber, which looks like the ProBox, and an ion control computer. Each ion chamber can hold 50 units of seed, or about 4 million corn seeds per treatment that takes about one hour. Cordova says the ion control computer can support multiple ion chambers and meet the needs of many operation sizes.

“We understand that when you’re dealing with something truly new, oftentimes it can be challenging to understand because it sounds so different and audacious,” Cordova says.

“Bright Yeti is developing radical technology to help solve one of the world’s hardest problems: efficient farming. We launched our Farmer Direct Program this year, bringing the technology to growers across five states. Demand was so high that we sold out before the season even started,” he says.

“Farmers likely don’t know they are missing out on bushels,” Cordova says. “We see a day in the not-too-distant future where electrophysiology will be the new normal on every farm.”