WayBeyond’s enterprise platform helps Costa Group identify the best new blueberries for commercial success
Costa Group has enhanced its digital agronomy capabilities by adopting WayBeyond’s FarmRoad platform in Australia to support its blueberry Variety Improvement Programme (VIP).
The fresh produce grower-packer-marketer has already been using FarmRoad commercially across its farms in Morocco, India and Laos, and the expansion of the relationship now brings the technology to Australia.
FarmRoad provides Costa with a scalable, data-driven foundation for its VIP by integrating localised climate and yield data into the breeding workflow. This allows Costa to make faster, evidence-based decisions on which blueberry varieties show the most significant potential for commercialisation across diverse growing conditions.
“Data and technology play an important role in enhancing our capacity to mitigate the risks of extreme weather and to pioneer new agronomic practices, such as growing berries out of the soil in substrate under protective cropping,” said George Jessett, general manager of international horticulture at Costa.
“Insights from FarmRoad will enable us to continue to be more efficient and targeted with our resources on the selection of varieties for commercialisation.”
FarmRoad supports daily decisions on variety evaluation by collecting climate data tied to varietal performance. It allows Costa to compare results across trial sites and identify the strongest candidates for commercialisation.
“This milestone confirms the original vision behind FarmRoad – to be the data backbone for globally ambitious horticulture leaders,” said Darryn Keiller, founder and chief executive of WayBeyond.
“Working with Costa’s elite breeding program shows what’s possible when R&D and digital agronomy combine. It’s not just about more data—it’s about better decisions, and better berries.”
Lotte Bayly, global accounts director at WayBeyond added: “Costa Group has a long-standing commitment to innovation, and it’s been a privilege to work closely with their team as they expand into data-led breeding. The scale and ambition of this deployment reflect not just what FarmRoad can do, but what’s possible when technology and trust go hand-in-hand”.
