The subtle differences in soybeans

Fully-integrated Canadian soybean company Sevita provides end-to-end solutions to the market. From breeding and genetics in soybean varieties for growers to supplying international food and beverage manufacturers, this company knows soybeans at a level few others can imagine.

Sandy Hart, General Manager with Sevita, shares that even with the company’s insight into soybeans, it’s sometimes beyond a human’s perception to identify one type from another. When clients are banking on a specific variety due to its properties and how it functions, trust that they are receiving the requested variety without a hair of doubt is essential.

What the human eye can’t see, AI tools can.

“We were approached to work on a Protein Industries Canada project by our grain pricing app supplier, Grain Discovery,” explains Hart. “They introduced us to the French-produced AI app Inarix.”

Already able to identify the variety of barley from a smartphone picture of seed, Inarix wanted to apply the technology to soybeans, and needed a company with lots of varieties to do so. Hart says Sevita took hundreds of photos of each of 40-plus varieties from two different crop years.

“In spite of the fact that the beans don’t look all that different, the AI is able to tell the difference and identify one variety from another,” he says. “That’s the cool part. You couldn’t do it with the naked eye.”

He says it’s a lot of little things that contribute to the differences, including colour, shape, size and the seed coat; the Inarix app looks at all of them and can immediately figure it out with a high degree of accuracy.

With the Inarix tool, anyone along the supply chain could confirm the soybean variety with their phone and the app in just a few seconds.

Although Sevita sells on a single-variety basis and has a very good handle on the types of soybeans being provided to a customer, using the Inarix tool delivers an extra level of certainty and enhances the customer story.