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From research trial to commercial crop: Polybee five years on
Publication date: September 23, 2026
Five years ago, Siddharth Jadhav sent a cold message to Hort Innovation from Singapore.
At the time, his company, Polybee, had an ambitious idea: use autonomous micro-drones to help pollinate protected crops. Early research suggested it could work, but proving it in a commercial growing environment was another challenge altogether.
According to Polybee, the technology has now progressed from research trials into commercial deployment with Australian growers.
Along the way, growers, researchers and industry partners helped test, challenge and refine the concept, turning a promising idea into a practical solution for one of protected cropping's ongoing challenges.
We caught up with Polybee founder Siddharth Jadhav to reflect on the journey from research project to commercial deployment, and what growers can take from it.
Take us back to the beginning. How did Polybee first connect with Hort Innovation, and what were you hoping to achieve?
Polybee began as a spin-off from the National University of Singapore, where I had been researching the aerodynamics of micro-drones. We had shown that the downwash from a small drone, flown precisely enough, could vibrate a tomato flower and trigger pollination. What we lacked was a place to prove it at commercial scale.
When we learnt about the Hort Innovation Frontiers Pollination Fund, we sent a cold message to the Frontiers team. What struck us immediately was the openness: a grower-owned organisation on the other side of the world genuinely willing to hear out an overseas startup.
Australia was also the perfect proving ground. The absence of native bumblebees, restrictions on imports to the mainland and the high cost of manual pollination in glasshouse tomato crops created a real industry challenge that growers were actively looking to solve.
Getting the project live took real endurance, particularly through COVID, but it became PH19000, delivered with Western Sydney University and Perfection Fresh. Together, we proved that autonomous micro-drones could pollinate strawberries and tomatoes in real commercial conditions.
What role has the ongoing partnership with Hort Innovation played in your journey?
For a deep-tech startup, it's critical to get access to crops, growing seasons and growers willing to host experiments in commercial environments.
Hort Innovation helped solve that challenge for us. They facilitated introductions to collaborators and put the credibility of an independent, grower-owned research body behind the work.
Just as importantly, they helped share the findings across industry. That's how growers first started hearing about Polybee.
When the pollination results started coming through, growers kept asking us the same question: if the drones are flying over the crop anyway, what else can they tell us?
That question ultimately led us into our second Hort Innovation-supported project, AS23001, where we're developing AI-powered yield forecasting tools alongside industry and research partners.
What changed for growers?
The outcome I'm proudest of is that Australian growers now use our technology as a routine part of production rather than as a novelty trial.
Pollination in Australian glasshouses has been a manual task for decades, and labour is increasingly difficult to find and retain. Removing that constraint has the potential to change the economics of production while helping address one of the industry's biggest pain points.
Under PH19000, we completed strawberry trials with Western Sydney University and a full season of tomato trials with Perfection Fresh across both snacking and truss varieties. Those trials validated Aerodynamically Controlled Pollination in commercial conditions and taught us which crops, varieties and settings respond best.
In our first full commercial season, we (Polybee) reported a double-digit yield uplift over the manual standard, measured through a season-long side-by-side comparison in the same variety and glasshouse.
This year, we crossed from research into commercial operations, launching our pollination service with one of Australia's leading glasshouse growers. For us, that's been the clearest sign that the technology is creating value beyond the research phase.
Beyond the numbers, what I value most is how the industry engaged. Australian growers are willing to run controlled, measured case studies rather than take claims on faith, and that's exactly what makes results generated here credible everywhere else in the world.
Where to next?
Our immediate focus is scale. We're expanding commercial pollination across Australian glasshouses while continuing to develop our yield forecasting capabilities.
The bigger opportunity is helping growers improve visibility and control across their operations. Whether that's protected cropping or field production, we believe the growers who can consistently measure and understand what's happening in their crop will be best placed to improve profitability over the long term.
Australian growers played a key role in helping validate this technology. We'd like to see them continue to be among the first to benefit from it.
