More Data, Less Sprays w/ Sarah Placella, Root Applied Sciences

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Today, we're continuing our series on videoculture and wine-making technology. And today, our guest is Sarah Placetta, founder and CEO of Root Applied Sciences. And we're going to be talking about reducing spring with vineyard sensors. Sarah, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. This is great. Can you please give me and Peter a brief overview of your background? Sure. Well, I actually grew up on a small farm in Row, Maryland. And I studied Earth and Planetary Sciences for my undergraduate. I got really interested in the microbes that control the world. So I did my PhD at Berkeley in-- so I was microbially called G and biogeochemistry. So I was studying how microbes impact nutrient availability to plants, as well as gases in the atmosphere. I am a recovering academic. After a couple of post-docs, I decided to switch over to industry to have more impact. And I worked for a biotech startup and an ag tech startup before starting Root. Great. And can you please give some brief overview of Root Apply Sciences for our listeners who may not know it already? Yes. We are a small company that does airborne pathogen monitoring for farmers. So we actually have devices that we set up in the field. They collect particles from the air, and we quantify target organisms by their DNA. What that means is we can tell you what's in the air. So you can think back to COVID times and everybody's like, how do we know when it's around? Well, we can know when it's around with science and technology. And so that's what we do at Root. We actually sense the air for farmers, because they are dealing with pathogens all the time. Without our technology, they don't know when things are around. So they're forced to spray prophylactically or lose their crop. In Graves, this is a really big issue. In California, a pattern will do is the biggest problem in wine grape production. And it can strike farmers anytime from March, April to August, that their crop is susceptible. And instead of regular pesticide applications, what we do is we tell growers if there's pathogen around and how much. And you can think of it as an early warning system, but it also helps them throughout the season because they can see where hot spots are. And they can use it to ensure that their spray program or their control program is working well. And it's just been very rewarding. So you mentioned farmers is that exclusively grapes or is there more diversification in terms of different types of the ag that you're dealing with? The only place where we sell a service right now is in grapes, but we have done work with strawberries, leafy greens, and we have a number of academics who are using our technology to do research in other crops. So potatoes, watermelon, hops. And in terms of pathogens that you guys are looking for, is there a subset or is it just a generic type of all pathogens? We can do anything with DNA. So anything that is a biological organism, we can do, including actually small insects. So there's a size, but the size is anything below a few millimeters. Oh, I wouldn't have expected insects to be included in the pathogen. Insects are technically past and not pathogens. Right. And there are other insect monitoring technologies. Yes, they have DNA. We can do them. There's other technologies for analyzing insects, but most of them are based on pheromones. So they're relying on hormones to attract the insects somewhere, and then they can either use a camera or the beating of the wings, all kinds of really cool things to detect the insects. If the insect is not attracted to a pheromone, those technologies don't work. And so there are ways that we can detect insects really well where these other technologies don't. So far, we've really been focused more on pathogens because they're so important, especially we've done a lot with fungi, fungal spores, are really important plant pathogens. And there hasn't been a way for growers to get the information that they need. And I guess to round out the overview of root, when did you found it and how long has it been in business? I started root in 2018. And the first time we worked with growers was 2021. So it took a couple of years to develop the technology, and we are entering our fifth field season with wind-gray growers. And so in terms of the solution for vineyard management, what exactly does that look like? You have something in the field, software, communications devices, what's the scope of what the solution looks like for vineyards? So we do have a hardware. We think of it as a hardware enabled SAS model. So we have a hardware device that collects the particles, and that can be deployed in the field or next to the field just above the canopy height. That device also sends information up to the cloud. We do have a software platform where growers can log in and see their data. All of our growers actually share data with each other. That's an option that they also elect. We're really proud of that. And so you can also see your neighbor's data and understand on the landscape level, what is pressure like in my area and how am I doing compared to my neighbors? Is that optional or is it just part of that works? It is optional, but I think it's so beneficial, and that's why growers do it. And I should say that having a higher sport count doesn't mean there's a problem at your vineyard. It means that there's a problem in the air at your vineyard, which could be from a neighboring vineyard or even far away. And just as a former networking person, what kind of communications do you use to send back the data to the cloud? Is it you have a take out point in each device or is it somehow brought back over Wi-Fi or something else? We have an LTEM connection right now. We're not sending a huge amount of data. So that allows us to take advantage of some less expensive technologies for sending the data as well as the size of the battery and the solar panel. So there are some other technologies that are image-based. And so they have a huge amount of data. They have to send. They have a huge solar panel. Makes it very difficult to deploy. I should also say that the particles right now are collected into a collection vessel inside the unit. The grower collects those and sends them to the lab for analysis, which is part of the surface. So part of the surface is the analysis. However, they have to collect the samples and send them either to the lab or we have a drop box in NAPA. Growers in the NAPA area will just put them in the drop box. And then we collect them twice a week and analyze them and return results typically within 24 hours. Does that mean most of your clientele is local to NAPA then because of that? We have a lot of growers in NAPA and Carnero, Sonoma. We have others in Sonoma as well. And we have growers on the central coast. And then just for clarity, what data are you then sending back from the device? So the data that we send directly from the device is things like how the device is performing, how much energy is coming in from the sun, what is the status of the battery, and then we collect temperature and relative humidity data, which helps us give a disease risk. OK, so the disease risk isn't live because you need to give those samples that are in the devices to know what's in there. It's just pre-curses to all the-- Yes, right now that's how our service works. We are actually building an automated system. We have an automated prototype that works, but it's one and it has a lot of refinement to do before it's ready to be in a growers field for them to depend on. So we are a startup and it's interesting being in this situation where on the one hand, we have a product that it's a great minimum viable product. It's even more than minimum at this point where we've been able to show that it works and that growers can save a lot of money and they're interested in it. So we have this kind of small business in a way, but then we also have this technology that we're actually fundraising for right now, which we're calling it a seed run because it's really seed stage. We have a prototype that works. Is it going to work all the time? No, we have to refine it, get it ready for manufacture before we have this automated system that allows us to scale our business, right? Because grapes are wonderful. We are able to make a huge impact and everybody in our team loves that. But in other crops, you talk to a corn farmer. They're not going to be able to drive around and collect samples twice a week. Having a device, our automated system, this one thing that you pop up on a pole, again, it doesn't have to be in the field. It can be next to the field and it just automatically collects the particles from the air and analyzes the DNA inside the device and then sends the data. So I think we can go through like an example and maybe take powdery mildew and talk about the core benefits of your solution regarding specifically around powdery mildew. In order to get started, maybe we can talk about powdery mildew the problem set at large first in terms of what farmers do, because a lot of our listeners are either in the industry in some form or a prosumer who is really into wine. And so just giving it a try. a little bit of background for those that may not know that much about powdery mildew would be great. Powdery mildew is economically incredibly important in the grape industry. It's about 25% of operational costs are spent on managing powdery mildew. And so pesticide applications for powdery mildew range between about six and 16 in California. So we're talking about many repeated applications. Conventional growers have pesticides that work better longer. And so they actually have fewer applications, but they spend more for each one versus an organic grower where they might even be spraying every week from April until the end of July. So there's a huge reduction there. Our growers are cutting 20 to 80% of their pesticide applications. And I would say the number I hear most frequently is five. I cut five sprays. So our listeners that are familiar, the application is usually a guy driving a tractor spraying. What is it? Copper sulfate or sulfur on the vineyard in order to kill the powdery mildew. Yes, and it costs about $100 in acre for a regular vineyard. If you're talking about a vineyard on a hillside where they have to spray by hand, it's $300 in acre. So it's a lot of money. And correct me for honest, what powdery mildew typically is that kind of white gray film that is on leaves or grapes. And so your solution is actually catching it before it gets to the visible point on the leaves and grapes. Or is that not a correlation? Is that like I'm thinking of like when you get like a rash or something like that. Like your system is picking it up in the air before it's identifiable on the plants. Yes, so powdery mildew we think is an airborne pathogen. So it's coming in on the air and then it lands on the grapes or on the leaves. And it takes a couple weeks to really get in. There's academic research that says in the greenhouse under ideal conditions, it takes seven to 10 days for powdery mildew to infect the plant, right? So it's landing on the plant. It has to enter the plant. And then the first thing you're going to see is somebody who's more skilled than I am holds the leaf up to the light and you can see these tiny little areas where it's more yellow than green like little dots. And that's your powdery mildew at the very beginning. And then as it proliferates. So then the organism, the powdery mildew then grows inside the plant. And then it makes a fruiting body on the outside of the plant. And then that releases more spores, which leads to more and more infections. Once the grapes have a certain sugar content, they're not susceptible to powdery mildew. So growers aren't going to spray. And that's great because we don't want our wine to be full of pesticides either. And it's great that the latter part of the season, they don't have to spray the pesticides and the grapes are still delicious. But then the powdery mildew has an overwintering body. So it makes this fruiting body called the chasmethesia, which sort of drops from the leaf and it lands on the canes or inside the grooves of the trunk. And then in the spring, when it rains, you get just a little bit of water that chasmethesia lets out asco spores. It's kind of like a little poof of these early season spores called asco spores, which are different than the next spores that it makes. So once it infects the plant material, if you have green material at the time, it's going to infect that and grow on the generally on the underside of the leaf into more fruiting bodies. And they're going to release the Canadian spores, which can travel very far. Asco spores trend not travel as far. So that's a powdery mildew one on one and we can decide if we want to put that in or not. No, I think it's great as Peter is going to struggle with those show notes. They work on his Latin. But in terms of your solution is really an early warning system and the cost reduction is really about detecting it before it becomes prolific on the plant material, treating and spraying essentially early when you know it's coming as opposed to later on when it's more advanced. Is that the boil it down simply? It's sensibly yes. We detected in the air at its earliest emergence before it lands on your plant or at the moment that it's coming into your vineyard. And that gives you ample time to respond. And we know that because we've been doing it for four years now we have four years of data. And we actually see two peaks of powdery mildew before growers typically can see disease symptoms. And so the way that growers use this is one last year we detected on March 29th in carnaros. It was super early and we detected multiple locations. Those were Asco spores. There wasn't plant material to have Canadian spores. So those were Asco spores but there was infectable material in some areas. So our growers had planned their first spray in that area for around April 16th. That's most common thing. April 16th was when we were going to start spraying. But we gave them this warning on March 29th. And so and it's a sensor network and they share data. So we got to tell everybody in carnaros that uses our service, hey we may not have seen spores at your vineyard but we are seeing them in carnaros. We know Asco spores don't travel as far. You may also have susceptibility in your vineyard. And so it's an opportunity to protect early because once you get disease controlling it is really hard. So our growers put on their first spray in April 2nd in that area instead of April 16th. Then when April 16th came this is typically it's typically weekly spraying, right? They didn't spray again until around I think April 22nd. So they ended up putting on their second spray when they had planned their second spray. But instead of having an infection already they had clean grapes. And then they were able to cut what would have been their third spray. So what they're doing is they're getting early warning of the pathogen of the threat. They're lengthening their intervals when it's low risk when there's no pathogen around. So they're lengthening their spray intervals and that allows them to cut sprays. They're also using it as a scouting tool because they're getting a heads up where it is. And if there's a spike at one sensor in one area they know to check to walk. They're always walking the vines but they know where to look. And then another thing that we're seeing a lot of is a lot of our growers are using more biologicals. And it really has made us think about the value of the technology. It's not part of me's like, oh, it's efficiency. It's more efficient because they're spraying at the right time and that works better, right? That allows them to ward off disease and as well as reduce their costs. However, it's also allowing them to use other products like biologicals which may have a shorter window of efficacy. And then they can also see that they're working. So when we started down this road, one of the growers that we were working with in 2022, incredibly progressive. He told me he was always afraid to use biologicals before. But because he was getting twice weekly data on the pathogen load in the air, he felt more confident trying them because if the levels got up, he was going to know about it before he had a big problem. And then he could switch back to a sulfur application. For those who aren't familiar biological meaning an organic spray? Actually, sulfur is organic, but I mean the biological mill decides. So they're actually microbes or microbial products that are instead of like a harsh chemical or sulfur. To kind of like, homeopathic wouldn't be the right term, but like a more natural solution that is less inundating or permeating the plant material. It's like yogurt for your gut, right? They're the right bacteria, kind of like a probiotic solution in a way. Lucky activity is one of our sponsors. Well, they should be for this episode. So, okay. So you talked about some of the environmental impacts that the producers can use, shorter acting, but more environmentally friendly products to treat this because they're having more fidelity of data from their vineyard and that they bring vineyards. What about the quality impact to the fruit? Obviously, one would assume the spring, the less pesticides is better for the fruit, but in terms of the actual quality of the grapes coming in, is there been demonstrable evidence for improvement? So I don't have research on the fruit quality. I just know what the growers tell me and what they tell me is that it's better and I think that part of that is fewer pesticide applications, especially growers doing native fermentation. They tell me their fermentation is faster, five days faster. They're getting an impact on the quality of probably the microbiome around the grape, but I think the fruit quality is also better because they're not having disease because they're spraying the pesticides at the right time and the pesticides are function better. I should say, I said pesticides, but we also just talked about how sometimes these are just microbes, but then there is a big environmental impact that is soil compaction, especially these early season sprays where you can tend to cut the most using our system. The soil is wet, going over with a tractor to spray, causes a lot of soil compaction. There's the diesel, one of our growers did, worked with a really big grower the past two years. Last year they did two pilots with two teams in two different areas and they cut 75% of pesticides at one vineyard and 63% in another. So they ended up spraying three times around the sensor at one vineyard and 12 at the rest of the vineyard and three times at the other vineyard and eight for the rest of the vineyard. And they told me that one spray at the vineyard where they sprayed eight times is a 13% reduction in their carbon footprint, which means that the vast majority of of their carbon footprint is coming from their pesticide applications for a battery mill do. So there's that. And then there's just like chemicals in the air and unfortunately in our egg system, the way that it works is it tends to be the local communities that bear the brunt of these chemicals. We've seen, I mean, there's a bunch of studies in the Central Valley that show different health outcomes for local communities and especially like schools that are near farms. It can be really sad. And growers actually do cite farm worker health as one of the reasons why they love the technology. And just related to that, if there's less battery mill do, then there's going to be less damage to grapes as well. So would that mean an increase in yield? I think so. I don't have the data on that. And it's an interesting question because that gets to how much fruit do they drop? And sometimes they're dropping fruit for battery mill do and sometimes they're dropping fruit because they like the vines to carry a certain amount of fruit and that creates a higher quality grape, I think. You could probably tell her how to when they're dropping fruit though to differentiate those numbers. You probably could. I can't do it. And I'm like, I feel bad. I should have brought a grower with me. No, that's okay. So in terms of we talked about spreading less. So there's some labor impacts in terms of reduction in terms of number of times that someone has to go out and spray, which would obviously be better for the workers, not spraying these chemicals and things like that. Are there other reductions or additions that impact with using the solution that has to change from a grower's perspective? So this is a really interesting question and it's a little bit tricky. So on the one hand, yes, there's less labor for spraying. In vineyards, there's always a lot of work to do. So what we're seeing is most of the growers don't think of this as I saved money as labor. They're like, I got to use labor doing these other important things that I wanted to get done. The challenge is actually for vineyard management firms because they have a schedule. And in some cases, it's too hard for them to use our technology because let's say I start in the north and I spray my weight of the south. And then I have a truck that picks up my tractors and brings them back to the north. And then we do it again. So to be able to say like, no, I'm not going to spray here today. And then I have to spray there in four days. My tractor's not in the right place for that. Right logistics. Yeah. Exactly. That can be really hard for them. But we do work with a number of vineyard management firms. And the ones we're working with aren't having trouble with that. And so maybe they have more tractors. They have more mobility in that way. So how is your solution priced? You mentioned there's a hardware piece, a software piece and all that. And what's sort of like a startup cost versus ongoing cost? So actually we own the hardware. We provide it and we fix it if anything happens. If they hit it with a tractor, technically they're responsible for it. We've always given people a pass for their first accident in the season. Eventually, we'll have to stop doing that when we're bigger. We'll probably have you get one accident per company or something. I don't know. But that's it. It's a hardware enabled SaaS model. So it's $3,000 is what they pay for the season. We provide the hardware and the testing. And there's a dashboard that they can use. They get a PDF report twice a week when their samples are analyzed that shows them the support counts at each sensor and a map that's color coded by the sensors in the area. So they can see what risk is like in their vineyard and also nearby. And that's all included. So $3,000 is that per sensor? Yes. That's per monitoring station. And how many monitoring stations do you need per acre? So our average grower has four stations. But our average grower obviously is not tiny. Most growers put them every 30 to 50 acres. We do have some growers who put them every 10 acres. And then they have really great coverage and they're getting, they're really doing precision management, block by block management. Most of our growers are putting them downwind of their hotspots. So if you've been growing grapes, you probably already know this is where I'm going to see Padre Mildoo first and they put it there. We have a big presence in carneros where they're growing chardonnay and pino. Chardonnay is much more susceptible to Padre Mildoo. So they put them downwind of their chardonnay. Does topography come into play like in terms of the topology of the vineyard site? You have to make different recommendations if it's flat versus on a hillside? Yes. So that's a great question. This sensor is reading in an area. So if you're in a canyon, if you put your sensor down in a canyon, it's not going to read very much. We always recommend putting them at a local maximum so that it's reading. Got it. So it's kind of like a radio tower in terms of you want to get the most visibility. You're getting the air that comes in. And so we also try to avoid really tall trees. So if there's a row of really big trees on the side of your vineyard, it's going to create like a bubble around it where there's not as much air flow. We actually had a USDA SBIR grant, a small business innovation research grant. And we tested essentially what is the range of a sensor? And we did it in carnaros where it was rolling hills because we said this is not unusual for grapes. And we know that when it's flatter, a sensor is going to cover a larger area. In carnaros, we know that it reads when the sensors are more than 600 meters apart, they stop reading the same things. So they read the same landscape level pressure, but they're not reading the same local pressure. So that means that that's approximately 10 acres. It's covering approximately 10 acres. And it's not going to be a circle around it. It's going to be like an oval in front of it based on the direction of the wind. Makes sense. Okay. But if you know where your hotspot is, then you can put your sensor in the right place. You get to know your hotspot and the direction of the wind. And most growers are very well aware of that. Makes sense. So given the cost and the benefits, what kind of ROI or customer seeing is there something like if a new customer comes by or someone that you can very clearly tell them like the benefit that they'll get from to make that cost decision palatable to them. Like how do they process that? Yeah. Our calculations based on what growers tell us is about 5X. 5X ROI. This is a very good ROI for the grower. And it does depend on how they use the technology and how much they want to trust it. And they absolutely understand this is about managing risk for a grower. It often takes growers a couple of years to warm up to how much do I want to stretch. And actually the biggest problem we see is when growers get so comfortable with a little bit, they're so used to stretching their intervals that when there's a little bit of powdery mildew, they're like, oh, well, that's just a little bit. Any amount of powdery mildew can lead to disease. So we do say, you know, if we're not PCAs, we can't recommend sprays or not. But we do say if there's powdery mildew around, you probably want to protect your grub. For those who aren't familiar, what does PCAs stand for? PCA is a pest control advisor. They have a license. They have a lot of studying that they do and tests that they have to take that they really know how to control disease. Got it. So how do your customers hear about you? Yeah. Great question. Like I said, we're kind of a combination start up small business. And we've really been focused on customers as pilot partners and development partners. We haven't done sales and marketing, but we should start because we realize that there's a lot more people for us to help. Most of our customers find us through word of mouth through somebody else that they know. But we are starting to do more and be around more. We are working with a vineyard team in the Paso Robles area now. And so we hope that we'll be able to get some data with growers and they'll be able to share it and spread the word about how they can use the technology. I think it's better for them to hear it from each other than from us. And so you said you have no sales and marketing team, but if you've done any other marketing things that may have helped like conferences or you know, we have we attended. I mean, I often attend conferences myself, but we've had a booth at the wine expo in Santa Rosa for the past few years. And last year we were at Unified Wine and Grape with a booth. I didn't do it this year just because of the timing and other things going on. And we have one at the Sustainable Ag Expo since the Luis Obispo in November, December. Have you found any of them to be more effective than others? I find that the booths are really great for talking to our customers that we already have more than for meeting new people, but it's great. Like, so some growers are more forthcoming than others. And one of the things that was really awesome about the booth that we had at Unified in 2024 is we're at the booth and a bunch of people I don't know because I talk to the vitoculturist, right? But there's a whole team of people. Vineyards require a lot of excellent labor. There's a whole team of people. So this group of people comes by and they're like, oh, we know you. We love you. We sprayed only two times last year. And I was like, I'm like looking at their badge because I don't know these people. But I'm looking there. So I, I, and then of course I recognize. And I said, oh, you sprayed only two times and you didn't have any problems. And they said, we had a ton of problems, but none with powdery mildew. You guys are awesome. And so that was just incredibly rewarding. And this is a vineyard that typically spray six times per season. And they sprayed only two times. This is a huge reduction. And it helps everybody. Good for the environment. They get to save money. And they make better wine. It's good. It's awesome. I think there are other solutions that also have sensors in the field that, you know, look for powdery or downy mildew or other things. How does your product compare to those other solutions on the market? So the number one thing is, of course, spray and protein. just calendar-based applications. And then there are the weather-based tools. So there are weather-based tools that you can find online. There's the, it's called, for Padre Mildu, it's called the Goobler Thomas, Goobler Thomas Risk Index or PMI, Padre Mildu Index, people call it. It doesn't work very well. We have some data, I'm happy. I don't know if you want to post some information on with the podcast, but we've just shown that it doesn't work. In 2021, we have a particular case study with one of our growers in 2021. I told him to spray for two months when there was no pathogen around in 22 and 23. It told him to spray after he would have already had disease. So unfortunately, the weather-based models just aren't that good. And part of that might be with climate change things are just different and unpredictable. There's a lot of unpredictability in our system. There is a traditional technology, sport-trapping technology, and they're called, a lot of people call them roto rods or spinning rods or impaction sport traps. It's a horizontal bar with two vertical bars. And on the vertical bars, you put like a little rod. And that rod is coated in petroleum jelly or vacuum grease, something super sticky. And then the horizontal rod spins, and that forces air through. So it spins a lot, and like you can't see the rods 'cause it's spinning so fast. And then as the spores come on those air currents, they actually hit the little rods and they get embedded and stuck in there. And then you collect the rods and send them to a lab and they do the analysis. When I started out with root, I knew that technology was available, and I knew that people didn't like it. They didn't think that it worked or it wasn't fast enough. And it wasn't clear to me why. I thought that it just didn't sample enough air. But at this point, I think that it's actually that it also has this material that makes the DNA analysis really difficult. So in molecular biology, we say rule of thumb, everything you do, you lose 50% of your sample. So this material makes it really hard to do the DNA analysis, which means it has a lot of steps and you lose a lot of the sample. But also, one of the things I've seen over time is, I think the rods get full. So once that surface is dusty, or has enough stuff stuck to it, there's no sticky and everything will just go by. And then it's also exposed to UV light. And we know that UV light can degrade power email do. So I'm not totally sure why there's a number of reasons why that solution isn't great, but they all kind of come together to say that it hasn't worked very well. There are some new technologies that are also coming up and the only systems that I know other than these that we just discussed are image-based analysis. And the problem with the image-based analysis is that it's such a, the images are so big, it's so much data to send. So they end up sampling two liters of air per minute, we sample 400 liters of air per minute, the spinning rods are 50 to 100 liters of air per minute. They're sampling two liters of air per minute because they're so much data to send, they have a hundred watts solar panel and a big battery. And it's just what I hear from growers is, it's three weeks too late. It's just really late and I think it's because the air sampling is so small. - Got it, okay. So it's really about the speed of which you can detect and the number of times at which you can detect. - I think it's sensitivity, like you said. I think it's really about sensitivity. And it helps to be specific. The imaging-based technologies are also not specific. So there's been over 40 types of power email do detected in a vineyard. Rose power email do can't infect grapes. However, first, you gotta protect your crop, of course. And my concern early on about something that was not specific would be that growers wouldn't be able to cut sprays and then it wouldn't provide value to them. But actually, it seems to be sensitivity. - One last follow on, just in terms of these solutions that you've mentioned just now, the spray and prey was the largest one. If you had to estimate like what percentage of vineyards are spray and prey versus no solution, could you have a guess on how big that market is? - I think it's 90%. - I'm just curious, just based on your gut of what you've been saying. So with that said, what are the main barriers to customers adopting your solution? Like what is the main point of resistance that you hear? - I think there's always risk aversion. Like I don't wanna take a risk. But for the growers that are interested, the number one barrier that we see is, I don't have access to a career. So I might be able to go and pick up the tubes, but how am I gonna get them to the lab? Like we get in bounds from like El Dorado County. Like they're, it's not easy for them to send samples quickly. So I'd say it's kind of those two things and that's one of the ways that we're excited about our automated system when it's ready in a few years, we'll be able to service everybody. But I do think like the biggest barrier is probably just people are cautious. And I think that we also at ROOP, like I said, we haven't done sales in marketing, but we need to because we need to make it easier for growers and we need to put the information together. So they can see like actually we've been doing this for four years now and we know some stuff and hear some information about how it works and what the risks are and what they are in. - So in order to address those barriers, I was like knowledge sharing is a big one for the big problem of being cautious of employing, get something else new 'cause I'm sure vineyard owners are inundated with new technology to buy in the rent. When it was someone called an our previous interview, it was like the box of defunct gadgets that are in the vineyard, I forget what the name was, I got to say it's like, okay, so I've been in a couple startup accelerators and people, they send me like, oh, you should talk to Sarah when they have a technology that's looking for a market, they're like, oh, you should do ag, go talk to Sarah. Like no, we've been sending, especially in Silicon Valley, we've been sending grapes because they think wine is like it's flush with money. It's not on the vineyard side. They've been sending this technology there and the vineyard growers are just sick of it. So I do blame the VC industry a little bit for oversaturating the vineyard growers and I should say also what's another barrier is wine prices are down, great prices are down and so it's a scary time to have a vineyard. - Yeah, well, hopefully leveraging technology, they can actually reduce the cost of farm, right? With a lot of different technologies that they could reduce the cost of farm and the amount of labor needed to farm grapes, even at high quality. - Absolutely, I think that I see that we're part of the solution and I should say we're also talking to a vineyard management firm that they have this thing called mothballing vineyards, which is like, do we want to spend the expense on farming the vineyard? Let's just keep our vineyard in good shape for the future when prices hopefully come up again. And so we have a firm that's used the technology for essentially when does powdery mildew show up because the cost of the program is so high that if powdery mildews doesn't show up until June, they'll be able to get a crop at a much lower cost and then it might be worth harvesting those grapes. But if powdery mildew shows up early, then maybe we just take our losses for the year. - And so you mentioned the automated system. Is there anything else on your product roadmap that you're excited about? - I am excited about a lot of things. To be honest, we try to keep most of our improvements under the hood so that it's just simpler because everyone wants to know, oh, well, if this is different, how are my numbers like they were before? But most of our improvements are actually related to power efficiency. That's such, it's so important actually to the cost of the device and to the ease of installation. How big the solar panel is, how big the battery is. So we have a lot that we're working on on efficiency for the power and then ultimately, we will also be integrating. So if you looked at our device now, there's a pole, a solar panel, and the device sits on top of the pole. We're integrating the solar panel into the device itself as well. And then the device has a wind vein on it. So it's always facing into the wind and even in a low power situation, we actually cycle the fan so that it's actively collecting and then it's off. It still collects when it's off because it's facing into the wind and as long as there's wind current, it gets pushed into the device and the air is still sampled. - So we talked about the battery mildew application. Are there other pathogens or you talked about bugs and other things that you're currently doing or like intend to offer as a product in the near future? - So we've done a little work on strawberries with betritus and we found that betritus is not always around. So I'm pretty excited about that and I think that we should probably add strawberry battery mildew and do some pilots on that. We're also talking to some corn and soy growers who are interested in doing pilots. There's a lot of potential for our technology and it's really thinking about how eager is the market and what's our path to markets. We've been talking to a number of multinational companies interested for specific problems and then that makes us think about, okay, well, that's great we could grow with this, we could grow with one company and that of course from a business standpoint is great, but we have to evaluate well, there's an opportunity with a potential grower in Guatemala. Well, we're not in Guatemala, that's hard. We have our devices have been in California. How do we think they're gonna work well in Guatemala? These is a crop that's very tall. They're gonna be really high. There are a lot of things that we think about. We have a whole matrix and we think about it. new opportunities. So we have a lot of opportunities. We want to take advantage of them, but we have to prioritize. But what about just for vineyards? You know, there's a battery. There could be Downey Mill Do. There could be other things, you know, pierces, disease with bugs or other things like that. Do you need to change anything with your device? Or is it literally just what's tested for in the lab? It's really just what's tested for. So we do already have assays for betritus and for grape downey mill do as well. And we did a pilot this past year for Vine Mealy Bug. We can detect the crawlers, which is really cool. But I don't think it necessarily added a lot of value. So it was nice to do the pilot and to see like, okay, we can detect. It happens that most people who have Vine Mealy Bug know that it's around and they're already using lures to treat for it. What about you type on? You type by yes. You know, I've talked to a researcher. There's research at UC Davis named Kendra Baumgartner, who is kind of the you type of person. We've talked about doing a project together. I would love to do a you type or project. I would love for her to be part of it, but we've been talking for a couple of years and we don't have a done one yet. So maybe we should just dive in and do one next year. You know, going to all these conferences, you probably, and talking to all the growers, you're probably here about a lot of other vineyard or winery innovations that are coming around. Are there any in particular that you're excited about? I'm really excited about the microbial mill-designed space. So the biologicals and in some cases, they're really just microbes. I'm trained as a microbial ecologist, so I love that. And I think it's so powerful to be able to like, I think all of us as consumers are kind of moving away from chemicals and we're excited about, I'm excited for fewer chemicals. Bacteria have all these antimicrobial properties. So I'm really excited for these products and I'm seeing our growers use them and I'm seeing that they work in. So I'm just so excited for the future of agriculture. Awesome. So we'd like to wrap up each episode on a personal note and we were wondering what is the most cherished bottle of wine in your personal cellar and when do you plan on drinking it? Well, I should say that I try not to have anything to cherish because my husband will inadvertently open it. We all know that. We have everybody in wine knows this play. This issue is to sing it and other always. But I do have a case of rich wine in my, we'll call it a wine cellar and I do really enjoy it. I just like to have a bottle. We like to have people over for dinner and have some good wine. So we want to thank you for sharing so much about root has been working on and the sensors and the future of agriculture technology. It's been super enlightening about what you guys are doing and we appreciate you sharing with our audience. Hey listeners, if you love the show, support it by buying a show notes book. 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