Indiana-based Advanced Agrilytics is using AI to provide growers and advisors with insights to make better farming decisions that could improve nitrogen usage and crop yields, leveraging over 15 years of field-level agronomic research and data.
Available in a beta version, TerraSignal is AI-based software built on the company’s Agrilytics IQ platform, providing agronomic advice, prescriptions with anticipated outcomes, and disease threat analysis through a 1-5 ranking (one being the lowest and five being the highest at risk), Kenny Avery, CEO of Advanced Agrilytics, told AgNavigator.
Advanced Agrilytics will add new TerraSignal features monthly until the service’s public launch in September 2026, and the company provides agronomy advice for for corn, soybeans, and wheat, with cotton and canola forthcoming.
TerraSignal’s prescriptions can include seeding recommendations or variable rate nitrogen application instructions, viewable through digital farming platforms like John Deere Operations Center. These recommendations can go down to the sub-acre level, allowing farmers to better address the specific needs of their fields, he added.
“Somebody can be farming 2,500 acres, ... but it’s actually a collection of a bunch of fields. And every field is different, or has the potential to be different, and that’s based on the soil type, topography, etc. And so, we take that today, and we write those prescriptions,” he elaborated.
While many AI applications are built on public data, Advanced Agrilytics is using its proprietary data, which includes “billions of data points from field performance,” to deliver its insights, Avery said.
“You can go into Claude or ChatGPT, and you can say, ‘Write me a seeding recommendation for this field, and it’ll give you a seeding recommendation, but you have no idea whether it’s even good, and ... there’s no data to back that up,” he noted.
Making use of every acre, not just the good ones
In addition to rolling out new features, Advanced Agrilytics continues its research and development efforts, spending $4 million annually to discover ways to improve fertility practices and make the use of every acre, even the challenging ones, Avery noted.
“A lot of precision ag firms want to take the very best acre and try to accelerate performance on top of that best acre. We actually take the opposite viewpoint. We’re going to try to maximize it on every acre. We look at that trouble acre,” he elaborated.
The company’s research has shown that planting two different hybrids in the same field could boost yields, he said. However, few planters come with multiple seed boxes, but this research can lead to innovations for original equipment manufacturers, he added.
“We have a lot of testing that would say that you should put two different hybrids on one field because one corn hybrid may perform very well in the high spots, and another one may perform in the low spots, where running water is running,” Avery said.
Advanced Agrilytics also developed an AI tool that is helping ag suppliers and farmers use biostimulants more effectively, Avery explained.
“I was in the biostimulant business. The argument always [was] ... it doesn’t work all the time, and that’s absolutely true. It does not work on every field, but there’s a reason,” he added.
