Adaptive Symbiotic Technologies’ BioEnsure® is a fungal seed and plant treatment that, when sprayed onto seeds, helps plants to adapt to water-related stress. While AST has not yet reported full impact results for their second year of the SWFF program, in their first year-and-a-half, they carried out crop trials in India that demonstrated crop yield increases of 24 to 40 percent across maize, millet, and okra in both non-stressed and water-stressed conditions, demonstrating the value-add to farmers in varied crop conditions.

They also began generating revenues in the developing world for the first time through their distribution partner Incotec, and to-date in the program, they have attracted over $3.5 million in investment capital to scale out their approach.

While their distribution of BioEnsure®-treated seeds is happening through mainstream commercial channels, they are currently exploring the possibility of piloting a women-led distribution model to select poor farmers.