By KEVIN WALKER
Michigan Correspondent ST. LOUIS, Mo. — Last week Monsanto conducted its 2010 Research and Development (R&D) Pipeline media call, highlighting the advancement of 11 company products.
“To begin, let me tell you how excited I am to be here talking about our biggest-ever pipeline update,” said Steve Padgette, vice president of biotechnology at Monsanto. “To me that’s like breaking the four-minute mile. Here at Monsanto the bar is set very high on the depth and breadth of data required for a project to advance phases.
“Above all, we want to make sure that the product we bring to market works. Having 11 projects, the most ever, move forward in one year, is simply astounding. It’s evidence of the cutting-edge research done at Monsanto’s labs and the technological breakthroughs that propel and move forward our R&D pipeline.”
Padgette, along with Vice President of Breeding Technology Robert Reiter, summarized the products and how they fit in with the company’s vision, using slides to assist with the presentation. “For me it’s really exciting to see what’s been happening over the past several years with breeding,” Reiter said during his presentation. “We’re really creating a breeding platform that is analogous to our biotechnology platform.”
The products include Genuity SmartStax: Refuge in a Bag (RIB) for the Corn Belt, which the company developed in concert with Dow AgroSciences. Monsanto has been working on its RIB concept for several years and has now entered into phase 4, the last before commercial introduction.
The two companies completed a regulatory submission for a 5 percent RIB seed blend to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in December. Pending EPA approval, this will be the only 5 percent RIB product, according to Monsanto. RIB is designed to make it easier for farmers to comply with a requirement that a certain amount of conventional seed be planted alongside the genetically modified (GMO) product in order to lessen the chance the target pest will develop resistance.
The slide presentation included new Monsanto data from 2007-09, illustrating that the RIB 95:5 product produces yields that are comparable to non-RIB products.
“If something is in phase 4, there is roughly two to three years until commercialization,” said Ben Kampelman, a spokesman for Monsanto.
The other products include Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans, Roundup Hybridization System for corn, Dicamba & Glufosinate-tolerant cotton, Roundup Ready 2 canola, Genuity Third-Gen corn rootworm resistance, Genuity Third-Gen corn lepidopteran resistance, Genuity Third-Gen herbicide-tolerant corn and FOPS herbicide-tolerant corn.
Two products with value-added traits include Omega-3 Enriched soybeans and Vistive Gold soybeans. Reiter talked excitedly about the progress the company is making in its development of GMO products.
“We’ve literally doubled the number of plots that we use every day that help us identify the next great products for commercial success,” he said.
One example of the company’s progress is its fight against the soybean aphid. Reiter said within two to three years, Monsanto will introduce a first-generation soybean aphid solution into the market. “It’s really difficult for a grower to know when his field has an aphid problem,” Reiter said, “because typically he’s going to go out and scout that field. But by the time he goes out into the field and really notices that he has an aphid problem, he may try a chemical application – but in many cases it’s already too late and he may face a yield loss.
“So you really want to have a genetic solution that will render the soybean plant immune to that aphid. We’re working very hard to breed a couple of genes for aphid resistance into our germplasm.”
Monsanto has put the slideshow part of the media call on its website. To view it, go to www.monsanto.com |
