The Climate Corp., a subsidiary of Monsanto Co., announced May 8 the acquisition of HydroBio, an agricultural software company based in Denver, Colo. The HydroBio team will join Climate Corp., strengthening the company’s efforts to deliver industry-leading digital technologies to farmers around the world.

“HydroBio has unique irrigation-focused data analytics capabilities, and as global water use for crop production increases, efficient irrigation is becoming even more important to the future of sustainable agriculture,” said Mike Stern, Climate Corp. chief executive officer. “HydroBio has built a successful business, and their tools will complement our Climate FieldView digital agriculture platform offerings in the future.”

HydroBio uses a combination of satellite imagery, soil data and hyper-local weather data to deliver irrigation insights for farmers to help improve their crop's water use efficiency and maximize yields. Its unique, data-driven irrigation management platform turns satellite images into actionable information, builds custom irrigation prescriptions for optimized water application and provides crop health monitoring throughout the growing season for enhanced productivity.

“We at HydroBio are very excited to join The Climate Corporation to bring our scalable irrigation management offering to more farmers in the future,” HydroBio co-founder and CEO Barrett Mooney said. “We’re looking forward to collaborating with the great team at Climate to enhance the Climate FieldView platform and introduce new digital tools that transform how technology is used on the farm.”

Prior to this acquisition, Monsanto Growth Ventures (MGV), the venture capital arm of Monsanto Co., saw promise in the developing company and was an early investor in HydroBio, incorporating it into the MGV portfolio that includes a wide range of independent companies active in key areas of agricultural productivity. This year, Monsanto Europe launched AquaTEK, a commercial irrigation management tool for corn that is powered by HydroBio’s irrigation management platform.

Officially launched in 2015, the Climate FieldView platform is on more than 100 million acres across the U.S., Canada and Brazil, with more than 100,000 U.S. farmers engaging in Climate Corp.’s digital tools. In November 2016, the company acquired VitalFields, a European farm management software company based in Tallinn, Estonia, marking the company’s first step into the European market. The company plans to bring Climate FieldView to Europe in the coming year, with additional launch plans for Australia, Argentina and South Africa over the next few years.