Bayer subsidiary The Climate Corporation (Climate) has announced strong harvest results for farmers using Seed Advisor, its new predictive seed selection and placement technology for corn. In addition, Climate accelerated 25 innovation advancements in 2018 through its global, digital farming pipeline to provide farmers more data-driven insights.

Seed Advisor, which was just announced in August 2018, provides seed dealers with a predictive model to help determine the best performing hybrids for each of a farmer’s fields. The tool was field tested by a group of farmers and their dealers through the company’s FieldView Innovators program across 100,000 U.S. corn acres in Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota during the 2018 growing season. Harvest results demonstrated an average yield advantage of 9.1 bushels per acre versus what the farmer would have planted without Seed Advisor recommendations.

In addition to expanding the pre-commercial test of Seed Advisor in 2019 to more farmers in Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota, Climate is also growing its seed selection and placement research to include Wisconsin, Indiana and Missouri. Predictive seed research is also underway in soybeans. An official launch of Seed Advisor is targeted for fall 2019 in the U.S., pending harvest results.