As the global economy charges toward net zero 2050 goals, more attention than ever is being given to how each major sector of the economy can contribute to both 1) reducing…

Fermentation has been used in food production for centuries – you can thank it for beer, wine, kimchi, yogurt and much more. But precision fermentation technology is taking this metabolic process…

As the relationship between the food system and both environmental and human health continues to draw more and more attention from consumers, businesses and governments, the need for better fat products…

If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it’s just how much can be accomplished from home. Remote work, online shopping and more have transformed the day-to day reality of modern life,…

Though the concept of plant-based or alternative cheese is not new, the number of high quality non-dairy cheeses has exploded in the past decade. With both health and environmental pressures weighing…

Metabolic health is total body health — the combination of ideal levels of blood sugar, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, blood pressure, and waist circumference, without using medications. Our recent Deep…

Research over the past few decades on aging and longevity has come to the surprising revelation that aging is a disease in and of itself, upstream of many of the most…

The specialty crops industry makes up a significant proportion of U.S.’s total agricultural output by value. However, producing specialty crops has its own set of unique challenges that call for similarly…

The healthcare industry is in the midst of a fundamental shift in not only how and where it provides services to patients, but how it bills for that care. A large…

Consumer preferences for food are rapidly changing. From how it’s grown, to how it’s made, what it’s made from and how it tastes, consumer awareness of what we eat is higher…

Optimal nutrition is a complex subject. With countless fad diets and an unending stream of contradictory studies, it can be difficult to wade through the noise to find the true innovations….

Healthy soil is at the root of food quality and yield, and soil carbon is a key component of healthy soil. In fact, as the main component of soil organic matter,…

In no other industry are democratization and cost reduction more needed than in healthcare. With technology advancing and costs dropping, consumers are more empowered than ever before to take control of…

We know that eating well and avoiding foods with refined sugars is crucial to good health, and it is well documented that poor diet is implicated in diseases like Type II…

Responsible nutrient management is an indispensable part of sustainable agriculture. Nitrogen, phosphate, potassium, and many other nutrients are necessary components in the production of crops used for food, fuel, and feed….

We discuss the future of nutrition research and the technologies, research institutions and companies that are paving the way to help us understand the gaps in our nutritional knowledge.

Headquartered in the Midwest, iSelect has historically been more focused on row crop technologies than specialty crop technologies. As we expand our scope, however, specialty crops such as fruits, vegetables, tree…

As macronutrients, proteins are necessary for all important human biological functions, from repairing tissue, to making hormones to managing the brain. That’s why, in the context of human health and nutrition,…

Wearable devices enable us to collect data to monitor our health at home. Exciting advances in technology increase the information we can access to make health decisions. In next week’s Deep…

As Covid-19 continues to shake the globe, it’s leaving many uncertainties in its path. Opportunity hides in times of uncertainty, and we are committed to finding and championing the best companies,…

While food and nutrition play key roles in our health, medical foods go a step further. Medical foods are formulated to manage nutritional deficiencies that affect disease progression and are prescribed…

Diagnosing, detecting and monitoring disease is one of the highly lauded potential applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in healthcare. The potential of these technologies to reduce time…

A healthy food system begins with healthy soil. However, over the course of the last century, soil health has suffered greatly. Loss of topsoil, water contamination, greenhouse gas emissions, and lack…

In 2019, over 600,000 people died from cancer in the United States alone. One of the primary drivers behind high mortality rates in cancer is late diagnosis. For this reason, there…

For years farmers, entrepreneurs and investors have discussed and debated the future of the farm, and in particular, the role robotics and automation can and will play in today’s farm and…

The inflammatory response is critical to our survival, helping us heal from injury and defend against disease. Chronic inflammation, however, has implications in a number of widespread and devastating diseases, including…

Longitudinal health data track the same patient at different points in time. For physicians, longitudinal data can offer a complete medical history of a patient, which allows for better health decisions…

In the world of agricultural technology (“agtech”), increasing agricultural yields are treasured as the holy grail to feed a hungry and growing population. However, it is well documented and more and…

Profitability is a frequent topic of conversation and a frequent challenge for farmers and growers, influenced by numerousfactors. Some of these factors, climate / weather, trade policy, and government subsidies are…

In a healthy person, the immune system fights off viruses and bacteria. However, autoimmune diseases result in the body using its own immune defenses against itself, the body it was designed…

In order to meet the demands of consumer shifts toward animal free products, there are a number of ways in which these products can be achieved. Cellular agriculture, the ability to…

Testing patients for cancer has typically involved a tissue biopsy – collecting the cells in question for closer examination. However, these tests can be invasive, risky, costly, and painful. Liquid biopsies,…

Often, when discussing how to improve the food system, we discuss how to improve the quantity and access to healthy and sustainable nutrition, usually through a lens of yield improvement, and…

Research shows that chronic inflammation may be the common factor in many diseases. iSelect invests at the convergence of food and health and is interested in nutrition’s role in inflammation. We…

On this Deep Dive discussion we will define what soil health means and its benefits, identify issues associated with poor soil health, and present possible solutions to improve soil health.  …

Developing, marketing and selling new food products is one of the most challenging and uncertain aspects for food companies, big and small. Developing a new food product, from ideation to commercialization,…

Ingredients play an integral role in the convergence of food and health. Modifying or changing ingredients can result in better health outcomes, sustainability benefits, improved nutrition, and improved taste. This week…

Everything in life is connected. The work we put in is equal to the value we get out of those efforts. The time we spend preparing for something is proportional to…

We need to grow more with less. By 2050, the global population will exceed 9 billion people, and the UN estimates that by that point we’ll need to produce at least…

Antibiotics, one of the major medical discoveries of the 20th Century, have enabled humans to treat a wide array of bacterial infections that once caused significant death and suffering. For this…

Shortening the new crop development cycle brings tremendous value to the agricultural industry as it will allow us to develop solutions faster and more efficiently.

iSelect invests at the intersection of food and health. Perhaps no other disease indication fits this description better than diabetes. Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes affect 30 million people in…

We spend a lot of time thinking about agriculture technologies and how they can be applied in the most advanced economies in the world, but we often overlook the pressing need…

Food Ingredients as a whole, is an incredibly broad topic, and one that is impactful to us every day.  We may think of food ingredients as sugar, flour and eggs, but…

While food has long been used to improve health, our knowledge of health is now being used to improve food. Strictly speaking, all food is functional, in that it provides energy…

Food Ingredients as a whole, is an incredibly broad topic, and one that is impactful to us every day.  We may think of food ingredients as sugar, flour and eggs, but…

Nutrition plays a key role in health and wellbeing. The role of nutrition, which can modify the genetic base, is crucial to the Human life cycle. It’s a science that deals…

Farm profitability is a topic of frequent discussion in agricultural circles, though it has notably declined in the past 10 years in the US, for corn and soy farmers in particular….

Nutrition plays a key role in health and wellbeing. The role of nutrition, which can modify the genetic base, is crucial to the Human life cycle. It’s a science that deals…

Farm Labor shortages are not a new problem in food and agriculture, but recent shortages in the past decade of available farm labor in the US are causing serious concern from…

With the regulatory landscape poised to change around hemp and its extracts (namely CBD), the hemp and CBD markets are experiencing rapid growth. This is creating many opportunities in genetics, cultivation,…

Farm Labor shortages are not a new problem in food and agriculture, but recent shortages in the past decade of available farm labor in the US are causing serious concern from…

In the last century, we greatly expanded the notion of what it means to be human. Remarkable innovations in both science and technology brought us to the moon, laid the foundation…

Synthetic biology is an advancing field of science, by which technological advancements in genome sequencing, DNA synthesis, and genome editing have enabled scientists to view biology as they do engineering. The…

In the last century, we greatly expanded the notion of what it means to be human. Remarkable innovations in both science and technology brought us to the moon, laid the foundation…

As aquaculture continues to grow at breakneck speed, developing new feeds will be critical. Currently, fishmeal is used heavily to feed farm-raised fish which creates an unsustainable cycle of killing wild…

Genome editing, particularly using site-directed nucleases such as the CRISPR system, has spread rapidly through the biological sciences. Genome editing in crops will significantly speed up the progress of breeding programs….

As aquaculture continues to grow at breakneck speed, developing new feeds will be critical. Currently, fishmeal is used heavily to feed farm-raised fish which creates an unsustainable cycle of killing wild…

Indoor farming, from hoop houses to plant factories, has the potential to transform the way we grow and consume food, from massive increases in yield and density, to significant reductions in…

Gene editing technologies have come a long way in the last few decades. While we’ve been exploring these applications in agriculture and livestock for quite some time, recent breakthroughs have made…

The seafood supply chain is notoriously opaque and cumbersome. It’s not uncommon for some seafood products to change hands forty times on the way to the plate. New traceability and data…

The advancements in artificial intelligence today are continuously widespread in their use, and the costly and time-consuming drug development process is no exception. From the process of discovering new compounds, to…

Until recently, gene editing was extremely expensive and took several months, even years. However, with the discovery of CRISPR/Cas-9, costs have shrunk by 99% and tests can be run in days/weeks….

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) presents many challenges at the individual, family and health system levels. From the therapeutics perspective, AD presents the highest failure rate for drug development of any disease indication…

Traumatic Brain Injury is arguably one of the most complex disorders in the human body. Recent advances in 3D imaging technologies and blood-based biomarker identification have proven to be significant advances…

As we age, our cells enter a state called senescence. These harmful cells do not support the cells of which they are a part, and as we grow older, their accumulation…

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) presents many challenges at the individual, family, and health system levels. One way in which the burdens caused by this disease could be mitigated would be the development…

Whether it is to provide public services or stimulate the economy, various grant-making agencies within the U.S. Federal Government help propel innovation driven by science and technology. The U.S. Department of…

Pork is the most widely consumed meat on the planet. Swine Tech enables pork producers to operate more efficiently and safely while meeting increasing global demand.

Therapeutics targeting ways to influence the human microbiome to either treat or prevent disease has been of substantially growing interest in the past decade, and as of late, with a lot…

Exploring the recent advances in medical technology to drive a multi-omics approach to Precision Diagnostics. Multi-omic approaches, or Panomics, utilize massive datasets to view the biological interactions within the entire complex…

Exploring the recent advances in medical technology to drive a multi-omics approach to Precision Medicine in the field of Oncology. Multi-omic approaches, or Panomics, utilize massive datasets to view the biological…

Protein is one of the basic building-blocks of life, something that just about every living thing on Earth needs to survive. But not all proteins are created equally. Until recently, animal…

Antibiotic use in livestock is increasingly under scrutiny due to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains in humans and animals. Livestock producers are increasingly looking for non-antibiotic alternatives to get rid…

40% of all food produced in the US is wasted. In restaurants, retailers, and homes across the US,  the cost of uneaten food is $161 billion. Opportunities abound to transform food…

With a shrinking labor pool and an aging farmer population, the agricultural workforce is under pressure.  Skyrocketing farm wages and low commodity prices further squeeze farm owners.  Enter automation.  In recent…

New cancer diagnoses are expected to rise by 70% in the next two decades. Early detection of cancer greatly reduces survival rates. Current standards of care are either highly invasive/highly accurate…

This deep dive presentation covers lighting and the emerging knowledge base around its impact on the health, growth and behavior of humans, plants and animals, a topic of increasing interest to iSelect.

Young people aren’t just using 23andMe to find out who their ancestors are, they’re digging deeper to find the “right” set of vitamins, drugs, probiotics, food, etc so that they can be…

Gene therapy is changing the future of how we fundamentally deal with disease treatment for inheritable diseases and many others. During this deep dive, we discuss the new technologies that are…

The soil microbiome holds many promises applicable to plant health, soil health and human health.  Recent research and technological advances have pushed forward our ability to understand ways in which we…

Exploring trends and opportunities in the longevity research arena, including senescence, parabiosis, autophagy, and others.

The agriculture industry is going through a sea change. Consumer preferences are changing, sustainability efforts are taking off, and the food supply chain is embracing the promise of new technologies as…

Tissue engineering is an interdisciplinary field that applies the principles of engineering and life sciences toward the development of biological substitutes that restore, maintain, or improve tissue function or a whole…

With a decrease in the amount of land available for farm use and an ever-growing concern about resource usage, farmers need to be smart about their livestock management practices if they…

2.6 billion people depend on the bounty of the oceans every day, yet global harvests of marine fisheries are 2.5x what our oceans can sustainably support. As more people cohabit the…