PanAmerican Seed Partnering With AI Company to Optimize Seed Production
July 19, 2021 
PanAmerican Seed is partnering with Tavant, a digital products and solutions company, on a project designed to help PanAmerican Seed reduce its overall seed production costs.
Tavant’s innovative solution, powered by advanced analytics, machine learning, and Microsoft Azure data services, will enable Ball Horticultural Company (PanAmerican Seed’s parent company) with real-time actionable insights to address supply and demand needs for developing, producing, and distributing commercial seeds and flowers for thousands of ornamental crops.
Tavant will combine machine learning techniques with Ball Horticultural Company’s experience and science of seed germination to predict and improve the overall pod outcome. Tavant’s master data lake architecture will be a centralized repository that will allow Ball Horticultural Company to store all its unstructured and structured data at scale. The machine learning-based models and advanced analytics with rich dashboards and visualization will enable better decision-making for the business.
“We have been exploring ways to predict the demand and supply of F1 hybrid and open-pollinated seeds. Our goal is to cost optimize the labor-intensive specialty crop agriculture business,” says Gus Tassara, Global Director of PanAmerican Seed. “By leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, we expect swift decision making, continue to be reliable, and stay ahead in the industry. We are excited to partner with Tavant and leverage their deep engineering expertise and knowledge of the agriculture technology domain.”
“Tavant’s partnership with Ball Horticultural Company brings our ag tech and machine learning capabilities into their ecosystem. Our goal is to optimize the yield and maximize their return on investment,” says Vikas Khosla, Executive Vice President of Tavant. “Our strong partnership and joint technology research focus with Microsoft will enable Ball Horticultural Company to improve productivity with data-driven decision-making.”
“This is the decade of connectivity-fueled agriculture. Microsoft is committed to open agriculture platforms that enable customers like PanAmerican Seed to grow more with less while protecting the Planet. Together with Tavant, we intend to bring the benefits of machine learning to sustainable farming,” says John Workman, Data and AI Solutions Specialist, Microsoft.
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