Digital tools drive crop deals

Advances in software and data tools are prompting several deals along the agriculture supply chain. Dow AgroSciences has expanded its collaboration with the synthetic biology software start-up Tesela­Gen and will use TeselaGen’s technology to power industrial-scale plant cloning. Cargill and other venture capital investors have put a total of $30 million in Descartes Labs, a manager of satellite data for forecasting crop yields and analyzing supply chains. And Bayer will donate plant data from 70 countries to the Swedish nonprofit Quantified Planet, which will make them available to scientists researching biodiversity and climate change.