MSU Research Foundation Podcast
The MSU Research Foundation Podcast takes you behind the scenes of research and entrepreneurship within Michigan State University's ecosystem. Discover how ideas create impact, with stories from dedicated researchers, ambitious entrepreneurs, and the innovators shaping Michigan's future. From breakthrough discoveries to startup journeys, explore how the MSU Research Foundation helps fuel innovation and economic growth across the state.
MSU Research Foundation Podcast
Modeling Smarter Farming with Bruno Basso (Part 1)
In part one of this two-part episode, we talk with Bruno Basso, professor at Michigan State University and co-founder of CIBO Technologies, a company using advanced modeling to help farmers make smarter decisions that improve both productivity and environmental outcomes. Bruno shares his journey from Naples, Italy to MSU, where he helped pioneer crop modeling techniques that have shaped modern agricultural research.
We explore how Bruno's lab integrates remote sensing, drones, and simulation models to capture the complexity of farming across space and time—and how this research evolved into CIBO Technologies, a venture-backed platforming helping businesses quantify the environmental impact of food production. Bruno also discusses the entrepreneurial side of science, what it takes to build a 30-person research team, and how smart agriculture can benefit farmers, businesses, and the planet.
Host: David Washburn
Guest: Bruno Basso, Professor at MSU and co-founder of CIBO Technologies
Producers: Jenna McNamara and Doug Snitgen
Music: "Devil on Your Shoulder" by Will Harrison, licensed via Epidemic Sound
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Welcome to the MSU Research Foundation podcast. Today I'm talking to Bruno Basso of Michigan State University. He's an internationally recognized agricultural systems scientist and a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences here he's also the scientific founder of a company called CIBO Technologies, a company that was formed to apply these advanced techniques to help farmers. I hope you enjoy part one of our conversation with Bruno Basso.
David Washburn:So today I'm talking with Professor Bruno Basso at Michigan State University. He is a former MSU Foundation professor, an endowed chair, and has since been upgraded to the university's most prestigious, distinguished chair, the John H Hanna Professorship. So congratulations, welcome, Bruno.
Bruno Basso:Hello Dave, thank you. Thank you for having me.
David Washburn:Well, I think your research on understanding spatial and temporal variability of crops, yield, water and nutrients have led to some very interesting work over the time, and you're an entrepreneur, you've started a company. You've done some really, really important things. So thanks for being here In full disclosure. The MSU Research Foundation and our captive venture fund, Red Cedar Ventures, is an investor in your startup company, so I want our listeners to know that. And also, as a reminder, this podcast is not intended to provide legal or investment advice. So, Bruno, your accent is not a Michigan accent, so I wondered if you could maybe start with your background. Where are you from? How did you make your way to Michigan State University?
Bruno Basso:Well, that's great. Well, yes, indeeds citizen, but italian american citizen. So I have dual citizenship and so I was born in the city of naples, which is an historical place with this year celebrated 2500 years of civilization pretty impressive place, and I guess many tourists will know Naples in connection with the Amalfi Coast and Positano, so some of the most you know possibly things close to paradise, I would say so. I grew up there and I was a student at University of Naples in agriculture, biological system engineering degree. But surprisingly, I have very, very long-term connection with MSU that not many people will know. I came the first time when I was 17 years old at Michigan State, and the reason was I played sports in Italy, at a high level in soccer, and I got injured and my dad, who was a scientist and a professor, knew this distinguished professor at Michigan State, a very well-known scientist. We're talking about 1988. So that's quite a long time ago.
Bruno Basso:And the connection was through letters. So my dad wrote a letter to Joe Ricci he's a well-known professor at Michigan State, the Nolan Chair Professor and to invite considering, you know, having his kid to help him in the field, take measurements and learn about agriculture when I was still last year of high school. I kept coming back every summer until I decided to basically work for Joe and I was his technician for about four years before I decided to do a PhD. So I traveled the world with him.
David Washburn:Okay, wow.
Bruno Basso:And the rest is history. So we have done quite a bit of work together.
David Washburn:Oh, wow, well, and Richie's famous. I think you've talked about this before, but he was sort of an early pioneer in building models. You know, you think about the late 1980s and early 90s. You know computing is getting cheaper and cheaper and the power of desktops and software tools and applications to build more and more complex models. And Richie was one, I think that you've talked about, that started modeling on a computer some of the types of things that he was working on Actually the interesting piece that the first things that he was working on.
Bruno Basso:He actually the interesting piece that the first model that he developed on just modeling water flow in with plants I mean the water balance of the soil and plants was done using punch cards.
Bruno Basso:Oh, wow, yes then, as you said, you know, the progress in computers allowed uh to do much sophisticated you know capturing photosynthesis and the entire process, all planned atmosphere.
Bruno Basso:But an interesting piece I guess for the audience is that Joe started as a scientist at the USDA, but the work could very easily be defined.
Bruno Basso:You know the father of crop simulation models, and some of the first investment came from more strategic reason, from the usda foreign agricultural service, in connection with the intelligence to predict how much wheat was produced in russia during the cold war, and so that investment from the government was kind of classified and um, from there I was attracted to all that and traveled the world with him, teaching courses in China, india and other places about the original model, which was called Siris.
Bruno Basso:Siris is the goddess of fertility, it's a Greek name and then together we evolved into a model that you well know now the name salus, which means health. So we thought about the health of the land and salus stands for system approach for land use, sustainability, which is a full crop, and biogeochemical models, and we'll go in a little bit more details. But so that's the evolution of going, you know, from a more simpler type of approach in predicting yield to full accounting of sustainability, greenhouse gas emissions, water use efficiency and environmental impact on water quality, which is a critical aspect here in michigan, surrounded by water, but ultimately it was always about productivity of both from a profit standpoint for farmers, but also just while minimizing environmental impact.
David Washburn:So along the way, you're doing your PhD and you have to learn how to write code along the way, and probably everyone in the group as well Is that that's right? I?
Bruno Basso:mean he wasn't. Yeah, it is a big time digital lab and it's interesting that we had programmers back then, not as numerous as I have now. So now for me it's almost a wishlist because I have, you know, whatever I would like to see coded. Now I have about 15 programmers in my lab. They do that during the beginning of my research.
Bruno Basso:I spend a significant amount of time on processing images of remote sensing images, in addition to modeling. You know so it was, I guess I would say, one of the first integrating space and time, in fact, kind of our my research has recognized as one of the first application of crop models for spatial application to understand, because the model simulates an hypothetical square meter of lead, simulates a plant, but plants are extremely variable due to variation in soils properties, position in the landscape, climate, you know, still not necessarily within the same field, even though you could have, you know, some changes if the field is big enough. But so how do you capture to make it more really realistic of what we do? And that was always my focus of linking imagery and process-based models to understand this complexity of space and time when it comes to producing food.
David Washburn:And you're well known for launching drones over farm fields to capture images. Correct, yeah.
Bruno Basso:One day it's a nice story. It's about now 14 years ago, and someone told me he says hey, you are on the front page of the Lansing State Journal. I said me no, it must not be me.
Bruno Basso:And the title was MSU Lends, the First Drone, which I was indeed the first one to use drones in agriculture about 15 years ago, with the same concept of being able to have high resolution. Just to really explain what a drone does. A drone really is a way of translating what the plants want to tell us. And how do they do that? They reflect the light, and so if they're healthy, the plant looks darker green. If they start to be less healthy, you have more diluted green, right? So people, a farmer, will very well know that a plant that lacks nitrogen is lighter green than a darker green.
Bruno Basso:So we don't look at colors or we just look at a bunch of numbers that, uh, basically reflect this reflectance percentage in each of these bands. And when you, when you see a plant more on the orangey or senescence, you know, in the middle of july, well you know something is not wrong, so it could be a, a disease. And those when other pigments cover chlorophyll, and so you have carotenoid, xanthophyll, and so all these sensors translate what the plants wants to tell us about what they're experienced through their roots in the soil Not enough water, not enough nutrients. A pest that is attacking, which basically closes, immediately defends themselves by closing the stomata. So you start seeing the plant wrinkle and it could be as for a different stress. So be able to understand all that with drones and then scale it to satellites.
Bruno Basso:The model that we developed comes in a little bit later by saying okay, what if I do something else which you couldn't possibly do in infinite number of experiments? So we can run all these questions. What if we try this and you try it on the computer? So, as we now say, it's like a twin, it's a digital twin.
David Washburn:Oh, interesting, yeah, Okay, so you still have a very active research group today. How many people are there so?
Bruno Basso:we're over 30 people in the lab, 32 at the moment and new hires coming, so it takes quite a bit of funding to maintaining them.
Bruno Basso:Because one good thing I understand the importance of attracting talented people, and so we pay them also a little bit more, almost compete with the private sectors, and so I'm fortunate enough to have really incredible talented group of physicists, mathematicians, geophysicists and agronomist, and then a bunch of coders, and then there is the new generation of PhD students interesting in taking measurements in the field, and so it's really the Basel lab is more of a family than a lab.
David Washburn:I love it. I love it. Well, I've always thought faculty professors are entrepreneurial by nature because they have to go out and pitch research ideas to funding agencies and you have to build out a team and a staff and you have income statements and expense statements you all have to analyze. And successful faculty are entrepreneurial by nature and the fact you've got 30 plus individuals in your team. But you've also become entrepreneurial in the sense of taking some of this work and bringing it to the real world. So you tell us about CIBO. When did that get started and why?
Bruno Basso:So I think you nailed it the analogy between a professor selling an idea. When we write a proposal, you say please give me funding so I can prove that I can fix a problem. Very much in the same align with this product will do better for you, it will solve you. And so I always frame this question what problem are we going to solve? What pain are we going to alleviate? Because if there isn't that type of request or research questions, in addition to knowing where the literature ended, we know until now. But if you allow me to ask this question, or research questions, in addition to knowing where the literature ended, you know, we know until now. But if you allow me to ask this question, you will learn so much more that this problem could be reduced by this.
Bruno Basso:So I think one general advice for students or anyone be able to quantify how good of the system is going to deliver, because you are able to predict in advance, you know how good this research helps the agency to understand that this is a valuable research that is going to deliver, possibly the outcome. We do not know how things turn out, but you have to basically trying to understand basically what really is going to. So basically put some risk into it, you know, to be able to, uh no guts, no glory. So it it happened. CIBO is has been an incredible journey. I'm incredibly honored, uh, to be the founder, co-founder, in conjunction with Flagship Pioneering, so it's been an amazing journey. Just to tell you, sibo means food in Italian, so just to stay.
David Washburn:I love it yeah.
Bruno Basso:Exactly and it needed the same what we just said the creativity of asking the questions that was going to solve some problem Suddenly, a percentage of luck being at the right time at the right place, and I'll I'll explain the component of the luck, how it happened. And then chemistry between people you know be able to build trust, be able to quantify the impact of the technology is a really something that this can run and make a change. And CIBO has now been active for 10 years and two years in the making in the venture lab, which you know a flagship investors in and basically gives a chance to the scientists to create this team, to see if this has really legs to move to the next level. And the component of the luck was still highly connected to the level of entrepreneurship, of thinking about putting sensors on the drone, connecting with the models and having farmers that we worked with seeing the results and so seeing their satisfaction, because you don't, if you don't have the, the last piece you know to basically implement it.
Bruno Basso:Agriculture is an applied science, so you do have to show that this is working beyond the plot scale, that we do the testing and and so that somehow I really still don't know, got into the news where we had a PBS NewsHour and the PBS NewsHour on a national TV attracted a lot of investors.
Bruno Basso:So the next day the phone rang and they say we would like to come and see you and we really like this space and time and the drone technology, and it was the beginning of digital farming and investing in the commercial space.
Bruno Basso:I mean, digital agriculture has been around much more in small scale or research ahead of time, mostly. You know machineries and stuff, but not the agronomic, not the diagnostic, not the predictability or the scalability, because that's the biggest thing that CIBO does brings the solution at scale. And so in the end we decided and I must say, and you're in front of me, without MSU Foundation or MSU Technology, CIBO would never have evolved. Because when I had those phone calls I really had someone to go to and they basically walked me through the journey from understanding what it means to have a term sheets and all the possible legal terms and protecting IPs and we have five patents that CIBO licenses and CIBO was being an incredible successful story. So the the luck was be able to get information out and at scale really quickly and be able to work so well, with flagship pioneering which attracted high profile investors.
David Washburn:And and then yes can you talk about some of those? I mean, I know that uh yes we came in for a little sliver, but you do, have you caught the attention of some pretty… we have.
Bruno Basso:Yeah, we're proud, basically… Flagship's great.
Bruno Basso:Yeah, flagship, incredibly good Flagship. For those who don't know, it's a major owner of Moderna, the vaccine company, and they've done extremely well in the life sciences or cancer drugs, and we're the only company that really does life sciences in a modeling space. They had others but with different angles, more on the genetics or microbial, but on the ag tech type of CIBO is the only one they really have on their portfolio. So other incredible investors we're all proud to tell Vice President Al Gore, you know Nobel Prize for making us more aware of basically the impact of climate, and so their investment fund is called Generation Investment Fund, based in London and San Francisco. They invested a significant amount of funding Founders Fund and several others have made because they trusted, they realized how important the science and the robustness behind and then the Possibility of basically seeing it solving problems, not just for farmers directly because it's an interesting business model.
Bruno Basso:CIBO does not sell to farmer. Everybody thinks that farmers are the ones that will benefit from making better decision. CIBO focuses on a B2B, business to business, and so it's a digital platform that uses SALUS, uses the model, the yield stability concept, all the geospatial analytics that I have developed, and delivers information on quantifying the environmental impact of the food production. So the main users are food companies. Main users are food companies, so cpgs or seed companies or several large companies are using the technologies to report yeah, what it's called scope three emissions the reduction if you source sustainable food.
Bruno Basso:They can report the quantification of how much greenhouse gas emission reductions or reduction of, you know, nitrate leaching, all the positive impacts of managing the land in a regenerative way, and so on for their shareholders investors To the extent you can.
David Washburn:maybe you can't, but are there any examples that you can?
Bruno Basso:So CIBO has had a really broad portfolio of collaboration with Nestle banks, robobanks or Land O Lakes is a current large payer, got it. Got it Pharmaceutical companies and seed companies and so, yeah, it's a lot of large portfolios and land investment funds.
David Washburn:So the idea is that, just from a sort of product and service side, then you land a customer and they're going to get an account and they can log in and then they sort of access to the platform and that's where sort of all the stuff is.
Bruno Basso:Correct. Well, the system works very much the way you described, but it's much broader where the companies are interested, whose farmer is regenerative. So one aspect of CIBO technologies is computer vision, so they detect the farmers that have cover crops and no tillage, and so they possibly source from a food shed that qualifies as to be more regenerative. But that still doesn't tell you how much carbon you sequestered if you are southwest Michigan versus central Iowa. And so the model, which is a register verified with registry with VERA's, the numbers are you know validated.
Bruno Basso:Then they can say this is a maize or a corn or wheat was grown by sequestering so much carbon in the soil and so much reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, to a point of a number tons of co2 equivalent, which they basically claim as a reduction in their supply chain. Because this is an interesting for in general, for the audience. I mean sustainability.
Bruno Basso:It's not just that word where you know farmers say, oh, I don't want to hear it's, it's really now embedded in just about anything that we do yeah we're doing it by being efficient, by avoiding waste yeah product, so it's, it's across the board, and so the gatekeepers, for example, the supermarket, say you, I need to have this fraction of the food that I sell with the label of being, you know, sustainable andumers want to buy that Exactly, and there is a tendency it's still, by the way things work, unfortunately and historically that some people can afford more than others, and so the people that can afford are much more demanding on the quality of the food, how it is produced.
Bruno Basso:At the same time, how much more education do we have on how we should be eating, on the impact on the health? Ideally, my goal is to make sustainable food available for people that can't afford it as much as you and I can go to Whole Foods, but many people cannot go there to be able to get a healthier, more nutrition density, at the same time knowing that they contribute it because they reduce environmental impacts.
Bruno Basso:You know less nitrate or chemistry into our waters. Everybody loves fishing In Michigan, you know. It's just critically important and agriculture often is seen as a potential source of pollution. Unfortunately, rightly so. It is by nature because it's a leaky system. You know water has to go somewhere, that's right, and it percolates. But if you manage supply and demand supply from what we put as fertilizer based on how much the plants need, which we can predict, both from space or through this mathematical model, then you only eat when you're hungry.
Bruno Basso:You don't have excess amount of food laying on the table all the time going spoiled and so on. So these are the kind of concept and the impact that the Basso Lab or CIBO is doing, which is a commercial arm of the science that we still develop. It's really the goal is trying to have a better planet trying to live in a better world.
David Washburn:My guest today has been Professor Bruno Basso from Michigan State University, researcher, professor, entrepreneur. I really, really appreciate your time and your collaboration and thank you for being here.
