A few years ago, Mast was reading through some scientific literature when he stumbled upon research about a houseplant wired to a motorized stand. When the plant wanted more light, electrical signals flowed through the living tissues. A control board sensed the current and wheeled the plant closer to the light source.
The founders believe their model could one day lead to a tool that would let people “speak” to plants. To bring its sensors and Bombadil to market, Electric Plant recently raised a $11.2 million seed round led by Onto Ventures and Climactic, with participation from Ponderosa, Endeavor Catalyst, Ludlow, Michigan Rise, The Fund, Schox VC, and Dug Song. Even in the most controlled greenhouses, farmers and growers don’t have full visibility of what their plants require, Mast said.
Traditionally, farmers, growers and foresters have relied on coarse tools that react to plants’ demands for water, nutrients or light. And tools like soil probes, handheld spectroscopes, and satellite imagery work well enough, but they leave much to be desired, Mast said. Most of that stuff still lags quite a bit behind the real-time needs of the plant,” he said.
Electric Plant had to start somewhere, though, so it used those devices to train its Bombadil model, which is capable of interpreting electrical signals in about 125 different species. The startup’s sensors are also significantly cheaper than existing tools, which generally cost thousands of dollars. The sensors, about the size of a regular iPhone folded lengthwise, are attached to a plant using stainless steel screws.
The screws must penetrate the cambium — the layer of living tissue just under the bark — to connect to the microvolt changes occurring within the plant. Data collected from these sensors is sent to a base station via a low-power wireless network. Electric Plant only needs a couple sensors per acre for accurate results, Mast said.
The data gets interpreted by Bombadil in the cloud, and the results are sent back to the customer, who can use it to, for example, adjust their watering or fertilizer schedules. Mast claims such a system can boost yields while reducing water use by 20% or more. Mast wouldn’t disclose who Electric Plant’s initial customers are, but it’s easy to imagine applications in agriculture and forestry.
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