Plant-breeding software marks 25 years

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This article was published 17/10/2015 (4023 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dieter Mulitze didn’t invent the seedless red grape or new varieties of apples that seem to show up on produce shelves on a monthly basis.

But chances are the plant breeders who came up with many of those new variations used Agrobase, the plant breeder data-management software developed by Mulitze’s Winnipeg company, Agronomix Software Inc.

After 25 years in business — version 37 of Agrobase has just been released — it has become the go-to data-management tool for plant breeders all over the world.

This month, Agronomix signed its first distribution partnership to develop the Chinese market.

“In most places in the world, we do not have anybody in the middle,” said Mulitze who got his PhD in plant breeding and quantitative genetics at the University of Saskatchewan in the early ’80s after studying math and computer science at Waterloo University.

“But China is different. For the software to work in China, it has to be translated into Chinese, the interface has to be in Chinese and the supports and training has to be in Chinese.”

Plant breeders develop new hybrids by crossbreeding and then growing them in small test plots in multiple locations. They need the Agronomix software to keep track of all the performance metrics such as oil and protein levels for canola varieties, for instance, collate all the data and decide what they want to do.

There is no question Agronomix is servicing a highly specialized niche market, but Mulitze believes there is still great growth potential for the company, especially in the largest country in the world.

The expectation is for significant growth for Agronomix in China. The Chinese minister of agriculture has made it clear they need to modernize.

“They have to feed a lot of people,” Mulitze said. “The market is waking up to these thing. It’s a good time to have a strategic alliance with a company over there that is involved in empowering the seed sector.”

The growing middle class in China and developing countries around the world means demand will keep growing for better tools to enhance food production.

The large multinational life science and agri-food companies such as the Monsantos of the world typically have large enough IT departments to manage their own plant-breeding data.

But Stephen Fox, a plant breeder with DL Seeds, a German company with operations in Manitoba, said it’s a necessary tool for the rest of the market.

“The cost of not having it would be rather a lot more,” he said. “It’s definitely good value for the money.”

With 11 employees — featuring a veritable United Nations-style diversity with staffers from the Philippines, Russia, Haiti, Azerbaijan, Pakistan and the U.K. — Mulitze has steadily grown the business since originally moving to Portage la Prairie 25 years ago after a research stint in North Africa studying plant breeding in semi-arid regions.

“My wife and I figured we wanted to start the business in a place that had a lot of agricultural activity,” Mulitze said.

They moved to Winnipeg a few years later when they realized it would be easier to recruit people to work with the highly specialized software.

Anita Brule-Babel, a member of the faculty of agriculture and food sciences at the University of Manitoba and a specialist in wheat breeding and genetics, earned her PhD alongside Mulitze at the University of Saskatchewan.

She used one of the early beta versions of the program 28 years ago and has been using it ever since.

“Dieter is a brilliant programmer,” Brule-Babel said. “And it’s not that there are not others available, but most are not designed specifically for plant breeders.”

The fact Mulitze can speak the plant breeder’s language makes his software the preferred choice of a growing number of agronomists in Australia, India, Turkey, the U.S. and throughout Europe.

“What Dr. Mulitze has done sends a strong message to our young people,” said Manitoba Jobs and Economy Minister Kevin Chief. “You can have a global impact and worldwide reach and have a global impact in your hometown.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca