A first-of-its-kind soil biostimulant produced by UMN-launched start-up Jord BioScience has just entered the commercial market, and is already taking home its first global award. Professor Linda Kinkel, who is faculty of the CFANS Department of Plant Pathology as well as the Chief Science Officer of Jord BioScience, founded the startup as a way to bring decades of ecological and microbial research to growers’ fields.
Jord was incubated directly out of the University of Minnesota through the Research and Innovation Office (RIO), which has facilitated the launch of over 300 startups that directly apply University research to real-world problems. Technology commercialization with RIO allows academic research to reach the market and actualize the University’s missions to advance human health, environmental sustainability, and food security. Since 2006, UMN startups have raised over $1.9 billion dollars, and beat the national average for startup longevity, with a 70% overall survival rate.
RIO’s Technology Commercialization staff worked with Kinkel for three years, helping her prepare the foundation for the startup and secure an independent investor right for the project, a longtime Minnesotan with farmland near Alexandria.
9311 Enters the Market
On August 14, 2026, Jord BioScience launched its first commercially available biostimulant product, 9311, into the market. The microbial isolate in 9311 was identified and developed as an inoculant to improve crop performance by partnering with microbial communities already present in the soil, while enhancing the efficacy of traditional inputs used by growers.
“Soil is not a blank slate. Any microbe we introduce enters a community that has been competing, communicating and collaborating for far longer than any product cycle," Kinkel explains in Jord’s press release for 9311. "The industry has spent decades refining what a microbe does and far less time asking whether it can survive and perform where it is introduced. 9311 is proof that an ecology-guided approach can deliver what farmers need."
9311 has undergone years of field testing in wet, dry, and mixed conditions, achieving a 2.6-bushel-per-acre average yield advantage in soybeans over elite industry-standard seed treatments and biologicals, per Jord’s press release.
AgTech Breakthrough Award
Only a week after its commercial launch, Jord BioScience’s 9311 received the 2026 AgTech Breakthrough Award for “Biological Crop Input Solution of the Year.”
“Biologicals are among the fastest-growing categories in our program, and the question our judges keep returning to is whether the results hold up season after season,” said Bryan Vaughn, Managing Director, AgTech Breakthrough. “Jord BioScience stood out in our evaluation by answering that question with three years of data and a published win rate. We are proud to recognize Jord BioScience’s 9311 as our 2026 Biological Crop Input Solution of the Year.”
With 9311 already registered in more than 25 states, Jord is keeping the momentum going. Kinkel and colleagues are presently working on additional products and collaborations that leverage decades of research experience and Jord’s extensive library of over 6,500 soil microbial isolates to create ecology-guided inputs for farmers.