If having the ability to get a 7-10-day early warning on plant disease in your no-till corn crop interests you, that possibility may be in your crop protection arsenal quicker than you think

Central Indiana startup Insignum AgTech has proven it can use corn’s own DNA to provide growers with 1 week or more advance notice of the presence of gray leaf spot infection over scouting with the naked eye. The company’s technology causes leaf infestations to “grow” large purple areas surrounding each disease breach on the leaf’s surface, leading to easy visual detection by eye or camera.

Linking Genes

Insignum CEO Kyle Mohler says the new technology is the result of the Boone County, Ind., company’s on-going collaboration with Purdue University. The technology relies solely on DNA found in all corn plants.

“Everyone is familiar with so-called Indian corn, which features many the bright colored kernels so popular in autumn decorations and on seed company catalog pages,” Mohler says. “The DNA for each of those pretty colors is present in all corn, from sweet corn varieties to the No. 2 Yellow field corn that dominates fields across the Midwest each summer.”

Mohler says the company isolated the genes that switch on the purple color and linked them with the corn genes that allow a plant to mount a defense against disease infection as soon as a fungal spore lands on the leaf surface.

“Just like our own bodies that respond to invading pathogens with an immune response, the corn…