By Emmy Powell
Communications Specialist

The 2023 Farm Bureau Ag Innovation Challenge seeks to identify top entrepreneurs working to address challenges faced by America’s farmers, ranchers and rural communities.

A Texas startup has placed in the top 10 semi-finalists of the national competition, thanks to the company’s non-invasive analysis of embryo morphokinetic activity to improve pregnancy outcomes of assisted reproductive techniques in livestock.

EmGenisys, Inc. is an animal health company that aims to improve the production economics and sustainability of livestock production.

“Twenty percent of embryos that get transferred into recipients are non-viable at time of transfer. The human eye cannot identify these embryos. They have no chance of establishing a pregnancy and are a financial drain to the producers,” Cara Wells, founder and CEO of EmGenisys, said. “Our technology scans embryos and is 85-95% accurate at identifying those non-viable embryos prior to transfer. Once they’re identified, people can elect to not transfer them, discard them or use them in some other capacity.”

The company’s flagship product is a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution offering a non-invasive analysis of embryos before transfer.

The software can be used with a smartphone and a microscope.

The user records 30-second videos of embryos in culture. The software analysis evaluates the videos frame-by-frame to scan each embryo for signs of life. Embryos are ranked so the veterinarian or embryologist can select to transfer only healthy embryos and improve pregnancy outcomes.

It allows producers to know if the embryo is alive at transfer, so they do not spend time and money transferring non-viable embryos.

“By making sure that every embryo is alive and healthy at time of transfer, pregnancy rates improve,” Wells said. “Because we’re not transferring the non-viable or dead embryos that don’t have a chance, we’re making sure every recipient has a good, verified viable embryo.”

When using the program, pregnancy rates improve up to 20%.

Although veterinarians or embryologists are the users, producers benefit the most, Wells said.

“They bear the economic burden of failed pregnancy,” she said. “We have a dichotomous customer segment, where those technically-inclined individuals are the user and the direct customer, but we’re benefiting the farms at the producer level.”

The startup seeks to help make animal production more efficient and sustainable and is working to get rid of limitations within the industry.

“The way that people evaluate embryo health hasn’t changed in over 40 years. We’ve had a lot of progress in animal genetics and nutrition,” Wells said. “IVF and embryo transfer has really played a huge role in creating the industry and herds that we have today. But the way that we evaluate embryo health hasn’t changed since the 1980s. So, we’ve created the first non-invasive and objective methods to evaluate the embryo’s health, which can be done in the lab or on the farm.”

The computer-based technology can see details the human eye and brain cannot, so it allows the user to look at advanced parameters of the embryo’s development in real time to evaluate its health.

Among the many challenges agriculture faces, one is rural veterinarian retention.

“If we can give veterinarians technologies that reduces the physical labor that they have to do and gives them a revenue stream as they can sell these technologies to their clients, it helps improve their profitability and reduces labor they have to do to improve the health of their clients’ animals,” she said.

Wells works alongside a team to develop and utilize the technology.

Russell Killingsworth is co-founder and chief veterinary officer for EmGenisys. He’s a veterinarian who practices embryo transfer in the Texas Panhandle. Tracy Druce is chair of the board and an intellectual property attorney. Wells, Killingsworth and Druce are the founding team and work alongside additional employees with various backgrounds.

As one of the 10 semi-finalist teams in the Ag Innovation Challenge, EmGenisys was awarded $10,000 in start-up funds.

The startup will compete for the Ag Innovation Challenge Award during the American Farm Bureau Federation Annual Convention in January. During the convention, $15,000 will be awarded to two finalist teams, $20,000 to the runner-up and $50,000 to the winner. An additional $5,000 will be awarded to the People’s Choice Team, which is chosen by public vote.

The semi-finalist teams will participate in pitch training and mentorship from Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business faculty and network with representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Business Investment Companies.

The AFBF challenge is funded solely by corporate sponsors—Farm Credit, Bayer Crop Science, John Deere, Farm Bureau Bank and Microsoft.

More information about the contest is available at fb.org/challenge.

Learn more about EmGenisys at EmGenisys.co.