At conferences, partner meetings and field days this year, my colleague Dr. Linda Kinkel and I have been emphasizing what we believe should be a fundamental shift in the biologicals industry. Biological performance has been inconsistent not because the industry picked the wrong microbes, but because we’ve been asking the wrong question about them.
Function alone was never enough, and it never will be. A microbe must establish and hold its place in a soil community that was there first. That’s what matters if we are going to produce something farmers can rely on, especially as markets and weather patterns grow more volatile.
Now I’m proud to say I can point to a product, not just a principle. Jord recently launched 9311, our first commercially available biostimulant developed for soybeans. It’s the first biological product built on microbial activator technology, which evaluates microbes for their ability to colonize a root, persist through a season and function alongside the microbes, plants, nutrients and chemistry already present in the field. But you don’t have to take my word for it. The results tell the story.
What the Data Shows
Across three years of soybean field trials, 9311 delivered a 2.6-bushel-per-acre average yield advantage over elite industry-standard seed treatments and biologicals, with a 79 percent win rate. Trials also measured a 30 percent increase in early-season biomass compared with an elite commercial treatment base.
Those trials spanned low, medium and high yield environments across a dry season in 2023, a wet season in 2024 and mixed conditions in 2025. Three years, three very different sets of stress, with 2026 commercial trials already showing similar results in emergence, nodulation, and vigor. That range is the point. The commercial question is whether a product wins often enough, across enough variation, that a partner can build a program on it and a farmer can plan around it.
Consistency is Not an Accident
We did not screen these microbes only for what they do. We held them to the standard that microbial activator technology sets, against a proprietary collection of more than 6,500 isolates curated over three decades. That’s a harder bar to clear, and it eliminates candidates that look excellent in a controlled setting but fail in real-world conditions. It’s why 9311’s results have held across four years of variable conditions. This was designed, not discovered at random.
What This Means For Partners
I want to be direct about why this matters beyond one product on one crop. 9311 is proof that the process works. That is what we are offering partners: not a single product to add to a portfolio, but a discovery approach that can be applied to their own pipelines. We are already collaborating with seed, fertilizer and crop protection companies on custom microbial discovery programs built around what they already sell.
Farmers deserve tools that work acre after acre, season after season. That has always been the standard, and it is the only one that matters. 9311 clears it. It is the first product to come out of our work, and it will not be the last.
If you’re building a biological program, reach out and join us on this journey.
