Donald Danforth Plant Science Center

St. Louis agtech company Agrela Ecosystemss is taking its PheNode® environmental sensor platform national.

Founded by plant scientists at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, Agrela launched the PheNode commercially in 2023 and has already surpassed half a million dollars in sales. The platform delivers real-time, research-grade data on air temperature, humidity, soil conditions, rainfall, wind, light, and more.

Now, with a $500K funding round closed in February, the company is scaling its St. Louis-based manufacturing and expanding its sales presence to meet demand that has grown across agricultural research, specialty crop production, and transportation infrastructure — including a partnership with The Ray, a nonprofit advancing sustainable highway infrastructure, which has deployed PheNode along interstate rights-of-way in Georgia and Washington state.

Co-founder and CSO Nadia Shakoor, PhD, who recently received the inaugural Innovator Award from The Academy of Science–St. Louis, built PheNode to fill a gap she felt every day as a researcher. The fact that it's now serving industries well beyond agriculture is exactly what it looks like when foundational research meets real-world need.