Phytelligence Appoints 35 Year Ag Industry Expert, Paul Nelson, To Be VP Of Global Sales

BURIEN, Wash. - Nov. 16, 2016 - PRLog -- Phytelligence (http://www.phytelligence.com), an agricultural biotechnology company that is revolutionizing food crops, today announced the appointment of Paul Nelson as Vice President of Global Sales for Fruit Trees. Nelson comes to Phytelligence from AgroFresh, Inc. where he acted as the commercial lead and cultivated strong relationships in the ag industry. His combined 35 years of experience make him the perfect fit for the scaling Phytelligence, which has experienced exponential growth over the past year.

Phytelligence operates on a mission to provide growers with the plants they need, when they need them. As VP of Global Sales, Nelson will be responsible for expanding Phytelligence's international fruit tree business, focusing immediately on the US, Europe, China, India and South America.  Given Paul's abundant experience and contacts in the agricultural chemical industry, he will also be supporting the commercialization of Phytelligence's pipeline of grower-focused compounds, currently in development.

Phytelligence is able to rapidly propagate plants and bring them to market using a proprietary tissue culture process. Tissue culture, in it's original form, has been used for over 50 years in the agriculture industry to grow plants quickly by placing them in a sterile agar gel, originally developed for tobacco. With the Phytelligence process, each individual variety receives it's own customized series of gels, specifically formulated to generate optimal growth and fulfill all nutritional requirements. The resulting plants are stronger and fruit faster, leading to a quicker return on investment for growers and the ability to give the industry the plants it needs without the long wait.

In addition to their innovative propagation methods, Phytelligence has a unique greenhouse process that leaves plants with full root systems and significantly lowers the mortality rate. Phytelligence plants are disease free, stronger than stool-bed grown plants and genetically confirmed.

"Growers are ready for a solution that resolves the issues they face in getting plant material in a timely manner," stated Nelson. "Working in the industry for 35 years, I am excited to be representing Phytelligence. They have perfected the science of tissue culture development, allowing root stock to be propagated in significantly less time than traditional nursery practices.  As the industry continues to develop new varieties and rootstocks, the wait time to gain access to enough plants that are confirmed true-to-type is significantly reduced. Ultimately this allows growers to realize a return on their investment much sooner. Now that's exciting!  Phytelligence is able to relieve the bottleneck and be a part of the solution that has long been a critical problem for growers."

Phytelligence was founded in 2012 by Amit Dhingra, PhD, a tenured Washington State University professor and chief science officer for the company. The company's ability to help farmers grow crops faster and utilizing fewer resources was spearheaded by Dhingra, who listened to growers and use their input to create solutions for their greatest challenges.

Over the past year, Phytelligence has expanded their footprint, securing an 8-acre Seattle-based greenhouse space in 2015 and a Portland-based tissue culture lab in 2016. Currently, Phytelligence has over 50 employees with immediate plans to continue hiring.

About Phytelligence

Phytelligence is an agricultural biotechnology company that is revolutionizing food crops. Utilizing its proprietary growing techniques to provide superior quality crops, Phytelligence enables higher grower profit by increasing speed to harvest and reducing input costs. Phytelligence provides additional value to food crop growers and plant breeders through the application of advanced genetics enabling confirmation of accurate plants, disease screening, plant repository services, securing of intellectual property, and the ability to co-develop new varieties of food crops. In addition, Phytelligence has a growing pipeline of biological and compound solutions aimed at improving returns throughout the food crop value chain.

Phytelligence was founded by Dr. Amit Dhingra in 2012 out of his Horticulture Genomics and Biotechnology Research laboratory at Washington State University and is headquartered in Seattle with offices in Pullman, Washington and Portland, Oregon.