Syngenta-Taranis Partnership Elevates Retailer Efficiency With Drone and AI Innovation
November 12, 2025 Synergy is defined as two organizations cooperating “to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.” Crop input provider Syngenta and Taranis, which delivers drone-based imagery, coordinated their expertise to provide retailers and their grower-customers with exceptional analysis of pests across every acre.
A little over a year ago, explains Meade McDonald, Digital Ag Solutions Marketing Manager, Syngenta, the two companies put together “a collaboration, a proof of concept” that has recently turned into a formal partnership that tethers Syngenta’s crop protection portfolio with Taranis’ imaging expertise.
“Our go-to-market strategies align in ways that make us natural collaborators in supporting retailers,” Meade said. “We both prioritize retail as our primary channel, which makes this partnership especially effective.”
“We’re really excited about our joint offering, AI to Action,” Meade continues. “The feedback from retailers and their growers during the proof of concept confirmed we had something special. That’s why we’re proud to now call it a true partnership in the marketplace..”
Jason Minton, Chief Commercial Officer, Taranis, agrees.
“What I’m most excited about with this partnership (is that it) addresses a problem that farmers are facing,” he says. “A labor shortage makes it difficult for ag retailers “to provide the right level of support for farmers of what farmers would expect to be able to protect their yield from diseases, weeds, all of that.”
Taranis has an artificial intelligence (AI) solution that helps the ag community with its labor issue. Taranis uses drone imagery to take images of every acre at 0.3-millimeter resolution.
“It absolutely gets to the leaf level,” McDonald says. “It shows farmers everything that’s going on in their field, it allows them to take action more quickly with their retail partner.”
Basically, the partnership leverages each company’s expertise — Taranis’ imaging and analyzing tools with Syngenta’s vast crop input portfolio.
Taranis’ Minton adds it’s not just Syngenta’s offerings that make it a great partnership. “When their people walk through the door, it brings a level of relevance to the agronomic support, to make good product decisions that Taranis can then validate (and turn into) actionable insights,” he says.
“I can’t think of a better combination for us to be supporting ag retail, to deliver that better service that growers not only expect, but quite frankly, they need it right now,” Minton continues. “And that’s exactly what this partnership will do, and we’re using AIs to make it even more efficient than ever.”
It didn’t take long for the initial experiment to yield positive results for retailers.
“We were confident from the start that this collaboration had real potential,” Meade says. “In 2025, we validated that it delivers measurable value—helping retailers work more efficiently, spend more time with growers, and approach their day in a more impactful way. By combining this technology with Syngenta’s portfolio, we proved we could create something truly valuable.”
Taranis’ imaging and artificial intelligence tools let the retailer, scout/consultant, and grower know where there is a problem, explains Taranis’ Minton.
“Retailers really learned a new way of working,” he says. “They save time and resources, and they saw this last year by letting AI prioritize the scouting that they do. Instead of walking every acre, which is not really feasible, they were able to focus on the highest risk field.”
With this system, agronomists can focus on those highest risk fields. It allows them “to provide the best solution, help farmers make profitable decisions, and validates the decisions that were made.”
For the test, the offering focused on corn and soy with the customers of 25 retailers and co-ops across the Midwest. According to Meade the program will expand its geographic reach in 2026, and they are exploring adding other crops — sugar cane, sugar beets, cotton, wheat.
There is often a bit of skepticism when it comes to employing new tools. One question is how accurate the system is at identifying various pests.
“We would encourage, in all cases, for there to be some type of ground truthing, and, of course, that’s exactly what we get when we start partnering with new customers,” Taranis’ Minton says. “However, what I would tell you is it’s highly accurate. When you’re talking about crop nutrient deficiencies, disease, even insects, we go down to a species level, or a very specific nutrient level. We will tell them the exact weed species out in the field, and where it is located in the field. It is very specific. It is just like an agronomist.”
According to Minton, the system can distinguish between tar spot and southern rust.
“In fact, right now, we’re debating how early we saw disease. Quite frankly, it’s the earliest we’ve ever seen it,” he says. “And it’s hard to find when you go out there looking for it manually. The drone doesn’t lie; the AI doesn’t lie. It looks at every single image. If it shouldn’t be there, it will send an alarm.”
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