Scaling data-driven breeding decisions

The opportunity

A global breeding organization wanted breeders to make faster, more confident advancement decisions using commercial performance data. Although valuable trial data already existed, breeders spent significant time cleaning, interpreting, and comparing information across disconnected specialist tools before they could select the best genetics.

The organization had a clear ambition to become data-driven, but lacked a scalable product that matched breeders’ workflows. Adoption remained low, the application landscape had grown to more than forty specialist tools, and the path from data to decision was fragmented. The opportunity was not simply to build another application, but to establish a shared decision platform that could become the foundation for data-driven breeding across crops and programs.

The system we shaped

We helped shape a cross-crop decision platform that brought commercial trial data together into a single decision environment. The platform automated data preparation, standardized commercial evaluation, and enabled breeders to compare varieties across environments and years with far less manual effort.
Rather than replacing one specialist workflow with another, the platform established a scalable decision system that could support multiple crops, breeding programs, and user roles while reducing dependence on fragmented tools.

How we made it possible

Through.design helped establish both the product direction and the operating model required to make the initiative successful.

We aligned breeding, business, data science, and engineering stakeholders around a shared product vision, translated complex statistical methods into workflows breeders could confidently use, and combined research, product strategy, UX architecture, iterative design, and validation to ensure the platform solved real operational problems instead of becoming another unused tool.

Alongside product design, we also helped create the delivery approach needed to evolve the platform into a long-term strategic capability.

Business impact

The platform created enough value that breeding programs actively requested onboarding rather than being pushed to adopt it.

The initiative established a scalable cross-crop platform capable of replacing a large portion of an application landscape containing more than forty specialist systems. Crops representing more than 60% of company revenue were successfully onboarded, allowing improvements to advancement decisions to directly influence the organization’s core business.

Beyond the immediate operational gains, the platform also created the digital foundation for future capabilities such as genomic prediction and increasingly data-driven breeding.