A new herbicide mode of action, short-stature corn and climate-smart farming practices are part of the company’s future.
Ask Bob Reiter about his favorite product in Bayer’s research and development pipeline, and the answer comes easily — short-stature corn.
Reiter, who heads the company’s Crop Science Division research and development, said this new corn hybrid goes beyond the seed.
“It’s really about the entire experience for the grower of using that seed and ultimately helping that grower maximize their productivity, helping to maximize the carbon sequestration, and minimizing the environmental impact,” he said. He shared his thoughts during a call to unveil advancements in Bayer’s pipeline projects.
He noted Bayer’s short-stature corn hybrid is moving closer to commercialization. More than 150 U.S. farmers will plant the hybrid in 2023. These, Reiter said, are considered the early adopters. By 2024, the company will open commercial sales for the entire short-stature corn system. He anticipates by then, across the globe, short-stature corn hybrids will cover 220 million acres.
“There’s more interest in short, statured corn right now, in terms of grower input … than there ever has been for any biotechnology trade that we ever introduced into the market,” Reiter said. “So that’s a pretty strong testament, I think, to the excitement that is out there in terms of growers interest in short-stature corn.”
He points to the fact that when U.S. farmers see the corn in the field, 75% of those farmers say they would plant one-third of their acres to short-stature corn if it was available today.
It will take time for Bayer’s short-stature corn hybrid to reach its total sales potential nationwide. While the breeding version of short-stature corn will commercially release in the 2023-24 window in the U.S, the biotechnology product will take longer and become available in the U.S., Canada and South America by 2027. Reiter said this launch will be the driver to expanding the reach of the product.
Reiter outlined innovations of Bayer products and programs in seven areas:
1. Crop protection breakthrough. Bayer is bringing the first new mode of action in major row crop herbicides in the past 30 years. It will be for postemergent control of grasses across all major row crops, said Rachel Rama, Bayer Crop Science Division head of small molecules. The new molecule works well on hard-to-kill grasses such as ryegrass. She says it is in Phase 3 production and should be available to farmers by the end of 2030.
“But what’s exciting for me,” Reiter added, “is the tremendous safety profile that this chemistry also has, and the fact that it’s a brand-new mode of action, which is critical for farmers to continue to be able to use products successfully and help in our goal of not just providing more effective weed control, but helping to make sure that that environmental footprint is small.” Bayer has launched one new active ingredient on average each year over a 15-year period.
2. Corn advancements. Bayer’s VTPRO4 is expected to launch in the U.S. in 2024. This RNAi-based corn rootworm trait offers belowground insect control. SmartStax Pro with RNAi technology will launch corn products commercially in the U.S. for the 2022 growing season across 100,000 acres, Reiter said.
3. Soybean global reach. Intacta 2 Xtend soybeans continue to help Brazil farmers. In trials, this variety showed about a 2.9-bushel-per-acre increase over others in the marketplace. The third generation is in Phase 3, and Bayer announced its fourth generation moving to Phase 1. Each phase adds a mode of action to protect soybean yield against insect and weed pressure.
4. Cotton trait innovation. Last year, Bayer had a limited introduction of ThryvOn as the first industry biotech trait for piercing and sucking insects. Bollgard 4 cotton now moves into Phase 3. “We’re also working on next-generation herbicide-tolerant systems that will allow our cotton farmer customers to have many additional modes of action and be able to better optimize the use of herbicides to protect their crops from weeds,” Reiter explained. It comes in the form of HT4 cotton with five herbicide tolerances.
5. Biological portfolio for specialty crops. Bayer’s biological crop protection portfolio includes more than 20 commercial and in-licensed products reaching 60 million acres in row crops and vegetables. Flipper is a biological insecticide for controlling pests in apples. Serenade is another biological product for organic production systems and adds to Bayer’s conventional crop protection.
6. Carbon program. Bayer expanded its U.S. carbon initiative with Project Carbonview, designed to create low-carbon feed, fuel and fiber products. It is in 10 countries, including 2,500 farmers in Brazil and the U.S., and covers 1.5 million acres globally. This collaboration between Bayer, Bushel and Amazon Web Services allows ethanol producers to report, analyze and better assess their end-to-end supply chain carbon footprint. Bayer is also working with The Andersons, one of the leading ethanol producers in the U.S., to bring this value to growers.
“We’re also partnering with companies like Microsoft, which will help us in this digital journey in terms of both tracking and identifying carbon, and then making sure that that carbon can be recognized in terms of how much carbon is being sequestered and how that might be used in terms of insets and offsets in the market,” Reiter explained. “Using these digital tools together with our other capabilities, I think is really a great one-two punch in terms of making a climate-smart agricultural system worldwide.”
7. Fungicides abroad. In Brazil, Bayer adds to its soybean fungicides with the next generation in the Fox franchise — Fox Supra. Expected to launch in late 2022, this new formulation includes Indiflin, a novel active ingredient to control Asian soybean rust. In Australia, Bayer will launch Xivana in 2022 for grapes — a new global horticulture fungicide for grapes, potatoes and vegetables — and Mateno Complete, with a third herbicide mode of action for use in wheat and barley.
Reiter said Bayer’s pipeline is about converting research and development “into value-adding solutions for growers.”
