About

Spornado Inc. is an AgTech company that provides hardware and services for disease management and IPM (Integrated Pest Management) which can be used by growers of most crops. Spornado manufactures an in-field air sampler that captures fungal spores comprised of a sampler portion and a consumable cassette. The consumable cassettes are shipped to a subcontracted laboratory for analysis and reporting of results. Depending on the crop and disease the customer is looking for a sampling schedule is created and a subscription fee is generated for the season. The company serves farmers through channel partners including Ag retailers, crop consultants, chemical companies and directly.

Project

Through the support of the Technology Access Program, Spornado proposes to undertake a six-month project focused on the development and validation of a disease risk prediction model for fungal crop diseases. The project will leverage Spornado’s proprietary historical airborne spore dataset and integrate it with complementary data sources, including localized weather data and crop hybrid–specific disease tolerance information, to generate actionable, field-level disease risk outputs.  Spornado will working with the Cambrian TDS site to develop and validate predictive models for crop diseases.

Impact & Outcomes

By the end of the six-month project, Spornado will have validated a disease risk framework that integrates historical airborne spore data with weather variables and crop hybrid disease tolerance data.  Spornado forecasts up to $500,000 in revenue growth and the creation of 1-2 new skilled positions as a result of commercialization of the new platform.  The platform will also benefit the Ontario Agri-food sector by providing growers with greater risk visibility and reduced fungicide application.