GRADUATED
Mineral
Discovering the intelligence of plantkind to feed and protect humankind
Challenge
Challenge

To sustainably meet the world’s growing demand for food, we need to change what we grow and how we grow it.

To feed the planet’s growing population, global agriculture will need to produce more food in the next 50 years than in the previous 10,000 – at a time when climate change is making our crops less productive.

Until now, the world’s approach to meeting this challenge has been to standardize what we grow and how we grow it. Modern agriculture practices focus on cultivating a few crops known to have high yields — today, rice, wheat, and maize provide nearly half the world’s plant-derived calories.

We also standardize how we manage the crops we grow — most crops are treated uniformly on a per acre or per hundred acre basis with chemicals for issues like pests, weeds, and disease and fertilizers. But an agriculture system that’s optimized for productivity and simplicity comes with risks.

Collectively, food production contributes about a third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions
Source: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Intensively growing just a few varieties of plants makes our food supply vulnerable to pests, disease, and a changing climate. Over time, it also depletes the soil of nutrients and minerals, reduces the diversity of the soil’s microbiome, and diminishes the soil’s ability to store carbon. Overuse of fertilizers and chemicals also negatively affects soil health, creating a vicious cycle that makes our farmlands less productive and the food we grow less nutritious.

The team conducting research in strawberry fields in Northern California
Journey
Journey

Embracing complexity to unlock a new era of sustainable agriculture

Project Mineral started with the insight that to sustainably grow more food on a global scale, new tools and insights will be needed to manage the staggering complexity of farming. The team started their journey by talking with breeders and growers around the world to learn about the challenges they face.

From soybean farmers in Argentina to kiwifruit breeders in New Zealand, they heard that they need to gather much more information on many more varieties of biodiverse plants—and quickly, if they are going to find varieties that are resilient and productive in the face of climate change.

Growers face hundreds of decisions every season, yet current tools aren’t equipping them to meet the challenges they face. Even though they use digital tools like sensors, spreadsheets, and GPS, their data is either siloed or doesn’t fully represent agriculture’s complexity.

Mineral saw an opportunity to build new software and hardware tools that can bring together diverse sources of information that until now were simply too complex or overwhelming to be useful.

The Mineral rover is a learning prototype – it’s using breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, sensors, and robotics to find ways to grow more food, more sustainably
The Mineral rover is a learning prototype – it’s using breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, sensors, and robotics to find ways to grow more food, more sustainably

Building on breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, machine learning, simulation, perception, and robotics, Mineral set out to build the world’s first detailed “operating manual” for plants. Just as the microscope changed how diseases are detected and managed, Mineral hopes that by seeing and understanding the plant world in a radically different way, we can usher in a new era of sustainable agriculture.

Building a complete picture of 
the field 

To uncover critical new details about how crops are grown and food is produced, the team developed a range of prototypes. These include the Mineral rover, which rolls through the fields gathering high- quality images of each plant. By combining the imagery gathered by the rover with other data sets like satellite imagery, weather data, and soil information, the team has been creating a full picture of what’s happening in the field and using machine learning to identify patterns and useful insights into how plants grow and interact with their environment.

Early experiments with bok choy
The team ran early experiments at the X lab, imaging individual bok choy plants to monitor features like leaf size and biomass.
Moving from the lab to the field
The team moved out of the lab to capture plant images in the real world. The first plant rover prototype, made out of two bicycles and some Pixel2 phones, captured images of each plant as it was pushed through strawberry fields.
Capturing images of plants throughout the growing season
The rover soon evolved to capture high quality images of individual plants throughout the growing season, and to handle a wide range of conditions like muddy fields and bright sunlight.
Experimenting with new capabilities and sensors
Next, the team experimented with a remote controlled rover with controlled rolling speeds and more sophisticated sensors. It could photograph plants from multiple angles.
Rolling through the fields—wind, rain, or shine
After collecting millions of images, the team created a rover that was resilient to the elements, had controlled illumination, and could collect terabytes of high quality images mapped to precise locations in the field.
Inspecting and understanding different kinds of crops
The current version of the plant rover is designed to roll through fields with different kinds of crops. There are sophisticated cameras and machine perception tools inside the rover and it is equipped with solar panels.
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Early experiments with bok choy
The team ran early experiments at the X lab, imaging individual bok choy plants to monitor features like leaf size and biomass.
Early experiments with bok choy
The team ran early experiments at the X lab, imaging individual bok choy plants to monitor features like leaf size and biomass.
Moving from the lab to the field
The team moved out of the lab to capture plant images in the real world. The first plant rover prototype, made out of two bicycles and some Pixel2 phones, captured images of each plant as it was pushed through strawberry fields.
Moving from the lab to the field
The team moved out of the lab to capture plant images in the real world. The first plant rover prototype, made out of two bicycles and some Pixel2 phones, captured images of each plant as it was pushed through strawberry fields.
Capturing images of plants throughout the growing season
The rover soon evolved to capture high quality images of individual plants throughout the growing season, and to handle a wide range of conditions like muddy fields and bright sunlight.
Capturing images of plants throughout the growing season
The rover soon evolved to capture high quality images of individual plants throughout the growing season, and to handle a wide range of conditions like muddy fields and bright sunlight.
Experimenting with new capabilities and sensors
Next, the team experimented with a remote controlled rover with controlled rolling speeds and more sophisticated sensors. It could photograph plants from multiple angles.
Experimenting with new capabilities and sensors
Next, the team experimented with a remote controlled rover with controlled rolling speeds and more sophisticated sensors. It could photograph plants from multiple angles.
Rolling through the fields—wind, rain, or shine
After collecting millions of images, the team created a rover that was resilient to the elements, had controlled illumination, and could collect terabytes of high quality images mapped to precise locations in the field.
Rolling through the fields—wind, rain, or shine
After collecting millions of images, the team created a rover that was resilient to the elements, had controlled illumination, and could collect terabytes of high quality images mapped to precise locations in the field.
Inspecting and understanding different kinds of crops
The current version of the plant rover is designed to roll through fields with different kinds of crops. There are sophisticated cameras and machine perception tools inside the rover and it is equipped with solar panels.
Inspecting and understanding different kinds of crops
The current version of the plant rover is designed to roll through fields with different kinds of crops. There are sophisticated cameras and machine perception tools inside the rover and it is equipped with solar panels.
Stories
Stories

Reimagining the future of agriculture with partners

Follow Mineral’s journey, working with and learning from partners around the world.

Today
Today

Building new computational agriculture tools with partners

In January 2023, Mineral graduated from the rapid prototyping environment of X. Today Mineral is an independent Alphabet company working to unlock a more sustainable, climate-resilient, and productive food system. The team has developed a suite of agriculture-specific technologies, including plant perception tools that collect and instantly make sense of images of crops and weeds in the field and a software platform that combines this data with hundreds of other agriculture data types. If you’d like to partner with Mineral or want to join the team that is tackling these challenges, Mineral would love to hear from you.

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