Startup Snapshot: Jord BioScience
The many plants we rely on as food require a vast, unseen network of microbes to flourish, and a St. Paul startup is working to help that microbial network function better. Founded in 2019, Jord BioScience provides custom solutions designed to optimize plant growth.
“The foundation underpinning Jord is the reality that plants need microbes,” says founder and chief science officer Linda Kinkel, who started the company with support from the University of Minnesota after decades as a plant pathology professor. In modern-day farming, beneficial microbes have been weakened due to pesticides and fertilizers.
Jord, named after the Norse goddess of Earth, keeps 6,000 microbes that can be combined with fertilizers and the like to improve plant performance and consistency.
The business-to-business company collaborates with big-name seed, biological, and chemical companies like Corteva Agriscience, BASF, Syngenta, and Bayer. Jord generated revenue for the first time in 2022 and has hit key milestones in field trials with clients, though it hasn’t yet received full commercialization approval. Jord is in the midst of multiple rounds of field tests.
President and CEO Keri Carstens, who joined Jord in 2022 after 14 years at Corteva, says the startup is filling a much-needed gap in the market. “What’s missing in the industry right now is actually thinking about what it takes to have a microbe succeed at what it does,” she says. “When the microbe is succeeding, the plant is succeeding.”
Headquarters: St. Paul
Founded: 2019
Founder: Linda Kinkel, with investors Erik Torgerson and Kip Pendleton
