Eric Ward is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of AgBiome, an agtech company that analyzes crop microbiomes to develop crop protection products & traits. Founded in 2012, AgBiome has no managers; rather, the company uses committees of employees to handle core functions like business development and financials. AgBiome has built a wide-ranging platform, called Genesis, integrating plant genomics with breeding and gene editing to characterize the plant microbiome to do this. On the tools side, AgBiome has more scalable plant screening methods and a growing database of plant microbiomes. AgBiome’s work creates a pretty large database of microbes (>80K, growing by 10Ks annually) & their effects on crops. On the products side, AgBiome uses these tools to hone in on microbes with a particular activity. Leading to 2 major products: Howler and Theia (both fungicides). With this platform and a series of products, AgBiome is helping growers protect their crops from insects, fungal infections, nematodes, and disease in general.

Eric discusses his career that spans over 3 decades from serving as president of the Two Blades Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to promoting the development of durable disease resistance in crops. Prior to that he was CEO and Co-Founder of Cropsolution, an agriculture chemical discovery company focused on novel fungicides. Eric began his career at Ciba-Geigy (later Novartis, now Syngenta), where he held various positions in research management, ultimately serving as co-president of Novartis Agribusiness Biotechnology Research.