Bosch, Flextronics back CropX to help farmers grow more food without wasting water

Bosch, Flextronics back CropX to help farmers grow more food without wasting water

A Tel Aviv startup that wants to help farmers produce more food with fewer resources, CropX, has attracted sensor manufacturers Robert Bosch and Flextronics International as strategic backers.

Specifically, Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH and accelerator Flex Lab IX added $1 million in venture funding to the Series A round for CropX, which now totals $10 million.

CropX makes soil sensors and irrigation controllers for use on commercial farms. It also makes an app to help farmers interpret all the data they gather, and make choices about how to treat their land.

CropX CEO and founder Isaac Bentwich, a medical doctor by training, and formerly the CEO of Rosetta Genomics, compared CropX’s technology to personalized medicine.

He said, “As we are not all supposed to take the same pills for a headache, land is not homogenous or even. If you water it evenly, you’re actually over-irrigating one part and under-watering another.”

CropX products work with the existing pivot irrigation systems– or big, slow-moving sprinklers– that are already used on a majority of commercial farms today, and that would be costly for farmers to replace.

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