First-Ever Drought Tolerant Corn Now One Step Closer to Farmers

Monsanto's corn product represents the first in a series of drought-tolerant and higher-yielding crop technologies which the company is poised to offer farmers over the next decade.

08/01/09 BASF Plant Science and Monsanto Company have announced that they are a major step closer to delivering the world’s first drought-tolerant corn product to farmers. According to the companies, the product has moved into the final phase prior to an anticipated market launch early next decade. They also reported that Monsanto has submitted the product to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for regulatory clearance.

“This product is the first result of BASF and Monsanto’s plant biotech collaboration,” said Hans Kast, President and CEO of BASF Plant Science. ”Our joint product pipeline has many high-performing drought-tolerant genes, which make us confident that the two companies can live up to their commitment of delivering successive generations of ever more drought-tolerant crops.”
 
Drought-tolerant corn is just one of the products currently under development as part of BASF and Monsanto’s collaboration in plant biotechnology, first announced in March 2007. The two companies are jointly contributing $1.5 billion (~ €1.0 billion) over the life of the collaboration, which is aimed at developing higher-yielding crops and crops more tolerant to adverse environmental conditions such as drought.
 
“In the almost 25 years I have been with Monsanto, the advancement of our drought-tolerant corn product into Phase 4 is one of our most significant R&D milestones, making this one of the most exciting times ever for our R&D pipeline,” said Steve Padgette, Monsanto Biotechnology Lead. Phase 4 is the final phase before market launch. “We are now intensively selecting the best trait-germplasm combinations to deliver excellent drought-stress performance and value to our customers upon launch. This product and other yield improvements that we are developing for farmers will reset the bar for on-farm productivity.”
 
Drought-tolerant corn is designed to provide farmers yield stability during periods when water supply is scarce by mitigating the effects of drought – or water stress – within a corn plant. Field trials for drought-tolerant corn conducted last year in the Western Great Plains in the United States have met or exceeded the 6–10 percent target yield enhancement over the average yield of 70-130 bushels per acre (equivalent to approximately 4.4 – 8.1 metric tons per hectare) in some of the key drought-prone areas in the United States.
 
Monsanto's corn product represents the first in a series of drought-tolerant and higher-yielding crop technologies which the company is poised to offer farmers over the next decade. Experts have noted that drought-tolerant crop technologies represent one potential tool for ensuring greater sustainability and production within agriculture. Products under development by Monsanto are designed to enable farmers to produce more on each acre of farmland while minimizing the input of energy and resources such as water.

Drought-tolerant corn technology is just one of the products currently under development as part of Monsanto's R&D and commercialization collaboration in plant biotechnology with German-based BASF. The two companies are jointly contributing $1.5 billion over the life of the collaboration, which is aimed at developing higher-yielding crops and crops more tolerant to adverse environmental conditions such as drought.

"This product is the first result of BASF and Monsanto's plant biotech collaboration. Our joint product pipeline has many high performing drought tolerant genes, which make us confident that we can live up to our commitment of delivering successive generations of ever more drought-tolerant crops,"
said Hans Kast, President and Chief Executive Officer of BASF Plant Science.

Higher-yielding -- or Intrinsic Yield -- soybean technology, being developed by the companies, which is expected to enable soybean farmers to produce more bushels out of each acre, also moved another step closer to farm fields.

The product, which promises higher yields through the insertion of a key gene, moved into Phase 3 and will now undergo expanded field trials, regulatory studies and trait integration into elite soybean germplasm. Once commercially available, the higher-yielding soybeans will build upon the company's Roundup Ready 2 Yield platform and provide farmers with an additional boost to the incremental yield advantage from that product-line. Intrinsic Yield soybeans are also part of Monsanto's R&D and commercialization collaboration in plant biotechnology with German-based BASF.

Other key crop projects advance, new crop technologies added:

Monsanto also updated the status of other corn, cotton and soybean products in its R&D pipeline:

SmartStax corn contains multiple different modes of action, for insect-resistance management, is more effective against above- and below-ground insects, and offers the company's most comprehensive weed-control system. The product moved to Phase 4, the final step prior to the product's anticipated 2010 commercial launch. In June 2008, Monsanto submitted a request to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set refuge requirements for SmartStax at 5 percent in the northern Corn Belt and 20 percent in southern states where cotton is planted, which are lower than those for existing technologies. Monsanto noted that the EPA has already granted reduced refuge requirements for the product's second-generation YieldGard corn borer technology, which is a key step in the process for receiving approval for SmartStax refuge reduction.

As the first three-way stack of herbicide-tolerant technologies in the pipeline, dicamba-tolerant cotton moved to Phase 2. It adds two new modes of action -- Dicamba and Glufosinate tolerance -- to the Roundup Ready Flex system, and is expected to provide farmers with the greatest flexibility in weed management and the most effective weed-control system available.

Two projects were added to Monsanto's R&D pipeline this year, including:

Second-generation, insect-protected Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans - This second-generation insect-control product is tailored to South American farmers' needs and includes an additional mode of action for potential reduced refuge requirements. This project is currently in Phase 1.

Roundup Ready, insect-protected sugarcane - Now in the Proof-of- Concept Phase, this Phase 1 project will leverage Monsanto's recent investment in sugarcane.

As the world's population grows, so are the demands on agriculture and the need to get more out of each acre. Monsanto is committed to help farmers boost on-farm productivity through established and new advancements in plant breeding and biotechnology.

In June 2008, Monsanto announced an ambitious plan to double yields in its three core crops -- corn, cotton and soybeans -- by 2030 compared to a base year of 2000 -- as part of a three-point pledge called the Sustainable Yield Initiative. The company also committed to conserving more of the world's precious natural resources by reducing by a third, the aggregate amount of key inputs such as water, land and energy, required to produce each unit. Monsanto plans to do this by providing choices for modern agricultural technology to its stakeholders and has committed to helping resource-poor farm families.

The company's investment in breeding and biotechnology research is key to meeting these commitments. Monsanto invests more than $2.6 million per day on leading agricultural research.