Every week, I go through recent patent filings across ag inputs, equipment, and agtech. Often they do not say or mean much, but it helps deliver a feel and a pattern across various segments of the industry. And sometimes there are incredibly interesting offering insight into significant break through’s or tools that will augment key product offerings.
Ultimately, a patent signals a company attempting to gain an IP advantage in the context of a problem and a solution it expects to give it an edge in the future, or to enable some freedom to operate, likely in an area, they deem valuable or core.
Filings therefore give a reasonable proxy for what an organization is prioritizing or looking at well before anything shows up as a product, or in any communications. Directionally, they can tell us what a company thinks is defensible, which in turn hints at what it may launch, in-license, or acquire to fill the gaps around what it already owns.
An important caveat is that a filing is not commercializing. Plenty of this IP will never reach the field as some are not granted (and never will be). And sometimes, it is defensive, and filed to maintain freedom to operate. Where a company chooses to play defense says something about what it considers core, too.
Previously, I have put together thematic filing overviews — such as John Deere Precision Ag patent summaries, or ones specific to N-fixation, or surrounding fertilizer. Moving forward, I want to put together monthly overviews of some of the stand outs from recent filings and grants.
Here is what caught my attention, and why.
Index:
Deere & Co — See & Spray Spray Tank Management
Meristem Crop Performance — The Liquid Ready BIO-CAPSULE
InnerPlant — Traits as a System
Pivot Bio — Always On Nitrogen Fixation
Mosaic — Incorporation of biological agents in granular fertilizers
1. Deere & Co — US 12,677,820 B2 Grant - Spray Tank Management
Overview
John Deere had a patent granted recently surrounding See & Spray — specifically, it is focused on calculating in-tank product management needs when using See & Spray.
See & Spray turns a flat rate per acre into variable by acre, so fill decisions become estimates, and farmer/fleet operators can end up with leftover mixed product which leads to added rinse-out, and disposal considerations at the end of the day, which leads to apprehension even when it comes to purchasing a See & Spray machine.
What the Filing Indicates
The system generates a weed distribution model for the field, then uses predicted weed pressure on the unsprayed acres to calculate how much chemistry the machine still needs, allowing the fill to be sized so the tank runs down close to empty.
The patent also covers multi-tank systems so that it can apply the same calculation independently to grass and broadleaf products carried in separate tanks.
Additionally, ag retailer and crop protection supplier demand planning was built on broadcast rates, and targeted application challenges that approach — having the ability to model based off previous use rates helps a farmer to be able to forecast their coming season needs.
Overall
I do not think Deere has had the penetration (in terms of total acres and total units) they are wanting with See & Spray about 5 years into the launch, and I suspect one aspect is surrounding this problem. The capability will help alleviate farmer (and ag retailer) objections.
One problem this doesn’t explicitly solve, but can lead to improved outcomes of, is better forecasting capabilities out of season. Enabling a farmer to plan product needs with their retail or herbicide supplier in the off season, or before tking product back to the farm is still another problem.
Related: Five Technology Patents from John Deere and What They Might Mean for the Future of Precision Agriculture - Upstream Ag Professional
Five Insights from John Deere's Virtual Agronomy Summit on See & Spray Technology - Upstream Ag Professional
2. Meristem Crop Performance - US 12,714,004 B2 - The Liquid Ready BIO-CAPSULE
Overview
Meristem Crop Performance had a patent granted in August covering a unique capsule that stores live biological material separately from the liquid product it will be applied with, and releases it into the jug only at the point of use:
The problem it addresses is one that has held biologicals back: getting living organisms from fermentation through the supply chain and into a spray tank still alive and at adequate populations.
What it Does
The system is a threaded capsule that screws onto the opening of a container in place of the typical factory cap, sized to standard fittings. An elongated tube hangs down into the jug, holding the live material, sealed off from the liquid by a foil at the bottom. A plunger sits in the tube with a cutting tip.
A tear-away locking ring prevents the plunger from being hit while it is in transit or by accident. At the point of use the operator pulls the ring, pushes down the plunger, the tip ruptures the membrane, the plunger moves the product load out of the system cavity into the jug, and the container is shaken to combine. The capsule can then be removed and the factory cap put back on until the mixture is used. Meristem also has a unit for bulk systems.
Three details I found notable from the patent:
Capsule volume is specified at less than 25% of container volume, with 10% given as an example, and payloads from about 50 mL up to 1 L. The organism comes as a small concentrated unit while the bulk liquid is something already moving through the channel, or already sitting in the shop. For a company like Meristem, this changes the distribution costs, including in absolute terms, as well as for managing the need for things like cold chain and the number of SKUs that have to be warehoused.
The patent lists the medium as water, fungicides, insecticides, nematicides, plant growth regulators, fertilizers, and micronutrients, and then names conventional chemistries outright: glyphosate, 2,4-D, dicamba, atrazine, paraquat, azoxystrobin, boscalid, mancozeb, thiophanate-methyl, imidacloprid, permethrin, deltamethrin. It also names Meristem's own Excavator and Microbilize as the medium. The claims are drafted so the biological is introduced into whatever is already in the jug rather than requiring a dedicated carrier, and the specification notes the mixture may be combined with other products before use. The capsule does not force a closed system, it lets the biological ride along with a surfactant, a nutritional, or a crop protection load.
There are multiple claims that seemingly would make it tough to get around. Claim 1 is the device, claim 10 is the container plus capsule as a system, claim 15 is the method of securing, suspending, depressing, disrupting, and releasing. Claim 20 covers the payload being a biofungicide, bioherbicide, biofertilizer, or bioinsecticide. Anyone doing point-of-use injection of a living organism into a jug in this general way would have to get around three different types of claims.
Overall
This is packaging solving a problem that formulation science has struggled with, at a low cost. If shelf life is a managed through the containers rather than strain selection, the barrier to entry in biologicals drops for anyone who can license or design around a capsule.
It is a distribution strategy as well, which for a company trying to strip costs out of the system is notable.
The friction and extra steps move to the farmer which can have challenges. Every step added at the application timing is a step that can be skipped, done wrong etc. Meristem seemingly selects for these customers, though, ensuring they are educating their dealers on how to best identify and support them.
Related: Precision, Platform, Performance: Inside Meristem’s BIO-CAPSULE - Upstream Ag Professional
Recently, Indigo’s CLIPS system patent was granted - US 2026/0256045. For a deeper look at it, check out Keurig for Biological Products.
3. InnerPlant US 12,716,844 B2 - Traits as a System
Overview
InnerPlant had a new patent granted in August covering the entire system for detecting crop stressors by pairing living, genetically engineered "sensor plants" with multi-tier spectral imaging approaches and analytical models.
The problem it tackles is the latency and diagnostic challenge of traditional crop scouting and broad-acre remote sensing. By the time leaf chlorosis, disease, nutrient deficiency or insect damage etc is visible to an agronomist or picked up by conventional multispectral NDVI satellites, yield and quality damage has already occurred. InnerPlant wants to identify it within hours of it incurring, and ensuring the systems are in place to let farmers and advisors know of it rapidly.
The patent’s commercial thesis turns the crop itself into the primary edge sensor: engineering a plant's internal biological defense mechanisms to emit optical telemetry (fluorescence) the moment internal stress begins, and wrapping an end-to-end data acquisition and modeling system around that biological signal to tell the grower exactly what pathogen or deficiency has arrived, where it is spreading, and what to spray.
What it Does
As has been covered extensively in Upstream, at the biological layer, InnerPlant traited plants are modified with promoter-reporter pairs. A promoter is tied to a specific metabolic defense pathway (eg: responsive to fungal infection, insect pressure, water deficiency etc) triggers an engineered reporter gene sequence, in InnerPlant’s case a fluorescent protein to emit a dedicated and detectable wavelength or band.
The technical aspect goes beyond the trait and gets at an integrated system spanning seed, sensor, analytics, and action:
Detecting biological fluorescence under full midday solar irradiance is notoriously difficult due to low signal-to-noise ratios. Rather than trying to manage through ambient daylight with active lasers or night-only sensing, InnerPlant’s design models the solar irradiance spectrum and specifically manages around this.
The claims and detailed description explicitly structure a hierarchical remote sensing mesh. This spans in-situ clamp devices affixed directly to stalks or leaves sampling at high frequency (minute/hourly), mid-range ground rigs or poles mounted across fields, drone sweeps, and long-range orbital satellites collecting lower-frequency, wide-field canopy data.
The system notably moves beyond detection; it gets into algorithmic diagnosis and closed-loop mitigation approaches. The computer system cross-references signal intensity and wavelength against a trained reporter model, calculates stressor magnitude and confidence scores, models the spatial vector/direction of pest migrations via clustered sensor rows, and generates an automated action prompt (e.g., selective fungicide or insecticide application) transmitted directly to the farm manager via software systems and dashboards, which could either be their own system, or could be enabled through the likes of John Deere Operations Center for example.
Overall
While the seed industry has historically spent billions engineering inputs or GMO traits that resist pests directly (eg: Bt traits), InnerPlant is treating the plant as an edge sensor generating optical data packets. The plant’s role is not to survive the attack unaided, but to communicate what it is experiencing, leading to improved decision making across a range of agronomic needs. This is what InnerPlant CEO calls a “data trait.”
An engineered sensor crop is useless without consistent, high-fidelity optical capture. To scale, the system requires either pervasive low-cost satellite hyperspectral constellations tuned to the exact bands of their reporters, or active grower maintenance of field-side optical towers and UAV passes. This is where the partnership with John Deere, and potentially others, comes in.
InnerPlant’s original December 2018 filings and continuations (US 11,808,705 and US 12,163,890), and this August 2026 grant, illustrate how InnerPlant is thinking about the future of crop management.
*Disclosure: Upstream Ag Ventures Inc. is a small investor in InnerPlant.
4. Pivot Bio — US 12,692,203 B2 - Always On Nitrogen Fixation
Overview
Pivot Bio had a new patent granted in July titled "Temporally and spatially targeted dynamic nitrogen delivery by remodeled microbes."
The aspect that stood out to me was stating that it is around bacteria that "are capable of fixing atmospheric nitrogen in the presence of exogenous nitrogen."
Fixing nitrogen especially in the presence of high soil nitrogen availability is a challenge — plants do not want to give up resources in exchange for Nitrogen when there is plenty around, and microbes get lazy in fixing it. Every nitrogen-fixing organism has a governor on it. Fixation is metabolically demanding, so bacteria evolved a sensing network that shuts nitrogenase efforts off when noticeable amounts of ammonium is around them. Evolutionarily speaking, it is an elegant system for the microbe, but commercially challenging in agriculture, because it means a wild diazotroph only fixes where nitrogen is already scarce. Which is to say, it works exactly where an agronomist would have applied nitrogen anyway. That is one reason associative N fixation products have challenges in being consistent deliverers of value. There are other challenges too:
What it Does
The Pivot patent effectively bypasses the governor. The claims highlight the specific edits and it is actually interesting to look at how they systematically are working to manage it: a mutated nifL with a promoter inserted into it, so the inhibitor no longer responds to nitrogen status; a mutated glnE producing a truncated GlnE protein that lacks its adenylyl-removing domain, so glutamine synthetase stays throttled and the fixed ammonium is not pulled into the bacterium's own metabolism; and a deleted amtB, so the cell cannot reabsorb what it has excreted. The claims then move a long list of further targets across the fixation and assimilation regulatory network, including pathways that govern how well the organism attaches to a root and survives there.
One thing that stood out to me from a regulatory perspective was this: "Non-intergeneric" means no genetic material from outside the organism's own genus, which puts these microbes outside the USDA's definition of a “regulated article.” That gives Pivot the potential for a product they can sell as a seed coating through normal channels with no deregulation process and no trait approval in export markets.
Overall
Fixing in the presence of nitrogen is what would give Pivot more potential. A microbe that only performs under deficit is not as valuable. A microbe indifferent to soil N is additive on every acre, works alongside the grower's existing base rate, and does not require anyone to cut their program on faith in year one. It’s compelling IP for Pivot Bio.
Related: Upstream Ag Insights Patent Breakdown: Crop Agnostic Nitrogen Fixing Technology - Upstream Ag Professional
5. Mosaic — US 2026/0257975 A1 - Incorporation of biological agents in fertilizers
Overview
Mosaic published a continuation filing in September titled "Incorporation of biological agents in fertilizers," covering a dry fertilizer granule with a biological coating sprayed onto it, and the process for making it inside a working phosphate or potash plant.
This is another patent in this breakdown addressing the same problem, which is getting a living organism to the field alive — this time via a dry granular fertilizer. Meristem, and the more loosely highlighted Indigo patent, both attempt to manage the issue at the jug or at the seed box. Mosaic is betting on getting the organism on at the fertilizer granular plant.
What it Does
The obstacle is a major one and is one I have covered multiple times: the fertilizer granule is a hostile environment for any living organism. You cannot simply spray a water-based microbial suspension onto dry fertilizer. Adding water pushes the granule past its critical relative humidity, and it cakes or clumps. The obvious workaround, suspending the organism directly in oil, is also ruled out: the disclosure of the patent notes that embedding oils with biologicals can hinder their viability.
The answer claimed is a water-in-oil emulsion. The organism lives in water droplets, which make up 30 to 80% of the emulsion, generated with a high-shear mixer and suspended inside an oil continuous phase. The oil is what touches the granule. The microbe gets the water it needs and the fertilizer never sees free water, so the critical relative humidity is not changed and the caking risk does not occur — according to the patent anyways (I’d love to see this in practicality under various conditions and scenarios, personally).
This isn’t the first time we have seen a patent related to embedding a biological, or an input, into a granular fertilizer — now defunct Anuvia had a patent filing surrounding embedding the dry ganular fertilizer with crop inputs. It remains one of the interesting avenues for delivering inputs to crops, and a differentiated opportunity for fertilizer manufacturers like Mosaic to improve margins and new value creation for the farmer and retails. Particularly for a company like Mosaic which has proprietary bulk fertilier products, and ambitions of $200 million of EBITDA by 2030, and $500 million in EBITDA as a long term target. Not to mention, by 2027, they see 55% of their tonnage in North America coming fro “Performance Products,” which is likely where this type of product would sit, and shows the real estate they can get onto.
The details show how this can work in an operating plant:
The de-dusting oil is the carrier. The spec names Dustrol, Dustrol Plus, VM160, N100, N150, N300, mineral and vegetable oils. Granulation plants already spray de-dusting oil on product. Using that same oil as the emulsion's continuous phase means no new unit operation and no meaningful capex beyond a shear mixer and a spray header.
Injection can happen almost anywhere. At the granulation drum, into the preneutralizer slurry, into the sulfur stream from the piston pump, into the sulfates on the belt feeder, onto the MOP feed ahead of compaction, at the bulk blending step, or onto finished product after screening. Application temperatures are claimed from about 70°F up to 210°F, narrowing to 160°F. Those ranges exist so the coating can go on hot product coming off a drum or cold product in a blend tower, whichever the plant allows.
The rates are specified. One to 10 liters of the liquid-biological mixture per dry ton, more particularly 2 to 3 liters per ton. Emulsion loading of roughly 10⁹ CFU per gram, with a target of 10⁶ CFU per gram or more on the finished fertilizer.
The list of potential organisms is large, with half not living Bacteria including Bacillus, Rhizobium, Azotobacter, and Azospirillum; fungi including Trichoderma, Metarhizium, Beauveria, and mycorrhizae; a long list of yeasts. Then a second list of biologicals that are not organisms at all: metabolites, peptides, lipopeptides, hormones, siderophores, glycopeptides, humates, surfactants, vitamins, enzymes, amino acids, and nucleic acids. The latter non-living molecules are most interesting to me because it is so difficult to keep organisms alive in a granule.
Overall
Mosaic's asset here is the sheer tonnage they distribute. Every ton of phosphate and potash they make already moves through granulation, cooling, screening, oiling, blending, warehousing, a spreader, and onto the acre.
Mosaic has been working on this family of patents for over a decade — showing they see the opportunity in it.
Having a patent, and being able to deliver on the patent are different things. This is hard to execute on. However, I remain interesting in watching companies work towards delivering on this type of capability.
