Speed-up R&D for an agricultural seed producer

How the RAGT group, one of the largest European producers of agricultural seeds, used big data to speed up the marketing of its new seeds and improve seed yields.

Why improve seed yields?  

The RAGT group, an acronym for Rouergue Auvergne Gévaudan Tarnais, is a European seed company (€350M in sales in 2019) whose mission is to develop, test, produce and market seeds (wheat rapeseed, maize, barley…). Half of the pasta in France comes from RAGT cereals. In order to remain competitive, RAGT must constantly launch new varieties. But the time to register a new seed in the French official catalog of plant species and varieties can take from 3 to 7 years. RAGT was therefore looking for a solution to reduce this time and be present on the market much faster. 

RAGT’s R&D department wanted to acquire tools to better analyze and exploit the multitude of data in its possession. This data consists in particular of species genotyping with an average of 30,000 markers, molecular marking, surveys of test plots, and public data on the standard genome. 

How JEMS developed a 360° view for RAGT 

The challenges were numerous between the technical debt incurred with the implementation of an “in-house” data warehouse, the unification of business processes or the integration of a huge volume of data. JEMS therefore worked with the R&D department in an iterative way to propose a centralized and unified platform to facilitate access and simplify data reading. By optimizing the business processes with a 360° view around the cereal variety and by implementing a strong governance strategy, RAGT was able to improve the quality of its seeds and reduce the time to market by 2 years. 

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