Growing the Future

One Farm Saved 500,000 Dollars by Testing Instead of Guessing

Episode Summary

Heather Deobald, Vice President of Operations at Quantum Genetics, explains how a DNA-based test on canola petals gives producers a real-time answer to one of the most emotionally loaded decisions in farming: whether to spray fungicide. She traces the company's origin in cattle genomics, its pivot into crop disease testing during a 2010 flax export crisis, and its unplanned expansion into COVID-19 testing during the pandemic. The conversation closes on the real economics of testing versus spraying on instinct, including the close to $500,000 her own family farm has saved over eight years by testing instead of assuming.

Episode Notes

Heather Deobald, Vice President of Operations at Quantum Genetics, sent her own husband out with a bag of test tubes eight years ago to try a new genomic test on their farm. The result came back negative for sclerotinia spores. He wanted to spray half the field anyway, just in case. She said no. They tested again five days later. Same result. They didn't spray.

In the eight years since, the farm has sprayed fungicide exactly three times, saving close to half a million dollars they would have spent spraying as a precaution. The technology behind it, a real-time DNA test that reads canola petals for disease spores in four hours instead of the ten days the original 1980s version took, grew out of a company that started in cattle genetics and pivoted through a Canadian flax export crisis before landing in crop disease prediction, and even did a stint running COVID tests during the pandemic.

What's Inside

• How a DNA-level petal test tells a grower whether sclerotinia spores are actually present, replacing a guess with a four hour answer
• The real eight year result on Heather's own farm: three sprays instead of an annual precaution spray, and close to $500,000 saved
• Why visual inspection alone cannot catch sclerotinia before it is too late, and what the risk barometer score actually measures
• How a genomics lab built for cattle breeding ended up testing flax shipments during a 2010 GMO export crisis, then pivoted into crop disease detection
• The company's unexpected detour into COVID-19 testing, and how that infrastructure connects back to the same DNA sequencing technology
• Why the same leptin gene test used to predict when cattle are ready to ship is now being layered with other traits to help producers sort and market with more precision
   

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Website: Quantum Genetix

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