The Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology has grown significantly since it first opened its doors last December. The Center now houses 21 start-up companies who are working on groundbreaking technology. This summer, the Center welcomed six new start-up companies, all working toward developing creative solutions to agriculture’s most challenging issues.

• Wexus Technologies Inc.: Provides growers with better tools and actionable insights to optimize and manage their utility bills, energy costs, overall energy usage, peak usage and surcharges, and utility rates.
• Palletech: Connects pallets to the cloud by replacing the central plank of a pallet with one that contains embedded electronics that collect data about temperature, humidity, shocks, drops, tilts and location.
• WaterBit: Provides growers with highly granular, real-time and low cost sensing systems to improve crop quality and yield by optimizing resource use.
• SWIIM System: A software suite and technology system that enables agricultural water users to optimize water rights, monitors the crop water budget, conserves water and increases net income for agricultural operations.
• Food Origins: Provides unique packaging labels that can scanned in the field and passed via the cloud to provide information regarding the progress of the harvest and density of the production. This data can be used by farmers, marketers, retailers and consumers to provide comprehensive insights into productivity and quality.
• BioLumic: Applies environmentally-friendly UV treatments to young plants, priming them for improvements in yield, disease and pest resistance and enhanced color and flavor.

Learn more about these and other innovators on the WG Center for Innovation website or guest blog site.

Additionally, five companies have pledged their commitment to supporting these entrepreneurs by signing up as sponsors. Their contributions will play an integral role in accelerating the development and commercialization of technical solutions for agriculture. The following new sponsors will bring the total number of organizations supporting the Center to 16:

• Coastline Family Farms: An independent, privately held, vertically integrated, year-round shipper of more than 25 top quality fresh vegetable products farmed on premium growing land in California, Arizona, and Mexico.
• Mann Packing: One of the country’s leading suppliers of fresh vegetables, including washed and ready to use fresh-cut veggies, snack packs and party trays, and washed and trimmed lettuce products for foodservice.
• City of Salinas: Surrounded by agriculture on all sides, Salinas is known as the Salad Bowl of the World and is committed to preserving agriculture as our major industry.
• Hayashi Wayland: Offers a variety of services, from traditional accounting services to retirement planning, investing, business valuation, litigation support and other consulting services.
• Wells Fargo: A provider of banking, mortgage, investing, credit card, insurance, and consumer and commercial financial services. Learn more about their $30,000 contribution to support innovation at the WGCIT.