David Bowen and Matt Smalley trace the evolution at Pioneer from notebooks and pencils to 1950s IBM mainframes to a modern data ecosystem where massive genomic sequences and drone-captured precision phenotyping drive every R&D decision. They highlight how a century of historical records — combined with AI partnerships and tools like Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold — allows Pioneer to transform raw information into decision science that predicts hybrid performance and guides the future of gene editing.
In this episode of the Pioneer 100 Podcast, host Max Armstrong dives into the silent engine behind a century of agricultural success: data. While many view "Big Data" as a modern tech buzzword, the Pioneer history reveals a 100-year-old commitment to tracking, analyzing, and predicting plant performance.
Max is joined by David Bowen (Corteva Data Strategy and Governance Analyst) and Matt Smalley (Data Science Leader at Pioneer) to discuss how the company’s data collection evolved from handwritten field notebooks to autonomous robots and AI-driven gene editing.
The conversation journeys through the 1950s — highlighting a landmark $20,000 contract with IBM — to the present day, where Pioneer processes petabytes of genomic and geospatial data. You’ll learn how the record-breaking yields of today (including David Hula’s world records) can be traced back to the genetic founder inbreds of the 1920s through meticulously preserved data pedigree.