Two old adversaries last Thursday signed on the line for a cross-licensing agreement to pave the way for development of so-called “next-generation” advanced weed and insect control technologies for corn.
Dow AgroSciences and Monsanto have reached an agreement enabling Monsanto to license Dow AgroSciences’s new Enlist weed control system for use in field corn. The Enlist system provides tolerance to 2,4-D and FOP (aryloxyphenoxyproprionate) herbicides.
In turn, Dow will license Monsanto’s third-generation corn rootworm technology, designated Corn Rootworm III, now under development.
Pending regulatory approvals, the agreement will provide both companies with the opportunity to build off the current SmartStax system, including Dow’s Herculex trait, and Monsanto’s insect resistance and herbicide tolerance traits.
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The expectation is for each of the companies to introduce these technologies in their respective elite germplasms. From the Dow Agro perspective, the agreement, long in the works, is only going to benefit farmers by providing multiple modes of action to combat weed and insect resistance.
“SmartStax offers the broadest platform in the industry in corn, for weed and insect resistance, and it’s kept the grower ahead of the curve, and we want to ensure it stays that way,” says Garry Hamlin, spokesperson for Dow AgroSciences.
“The day of single-trait crop technology is over. Farmers see now that they can’t rely on the same single mode of action, again and again, and have the same consistency and performance.”
It’s an accepted fact that stacked-trait technologies provide greater genetic diversity in plants, to battle resistance issues in both pest and weed management strategies.
Jeff Loessin, Canadian product manager for the Enlist system for Dow, says the reliance on single mode-of-action herbicides, or even single cultural practices, has led growers to the point where there are some significant weed resistance issues.
“So what this type of agreement really does is it ensures that these tools are going to be available in a broader range of genetics,” says Loessin. “It’s going to be available in seed from Dow AgroSciences and seed companies Mycogen and Hyland, but it also means that there are going to be seed technologies from Monsanto’s seed companies.”
“Changing playbook”
Asked what the agreement means to farmers, the response was that nothing between Monsanto and Dow will change from a competitive perspective; they are two separate interests advancing their respective seed and technology offerings through their own research pipelines.
That’s the short-term perspective. On a longer-term basis, Enlist will be incorporated into SmartStax corn, adding 2,4-D and “fop” herbicides to the effort to deal with resistance to glyphosate and its potential development with glufosinate.
The companies are also looking at Monsanto’s Corn Rootworm III, which is an RNAI (RNA-interference) trait, the first non-Bt-based insect resistance trait in the industry. That development is still several years away from commercial availability.
“I think farmers see today that when you use the same playbook, time after time, the weeds are going to win, so sustainability means changing that playbook,” says Hamlin. “Today, farmers have a lot of different options, more options than they’ve ever had before, in terms of crop production technology and protection technology. And there’s more technology waiting in the wings.”
From a Canadian perspective, Loessin says that Enlist corn in Canada will be launched in the fall of 2013 or in time for planting in spring 2014.
Currently, there are three levels of approval Dow requires before a launch: Canadian trade approval, which the company now has in place, U.S. trade approval and Canadian herbicide approval, both of which are pending. But he adds he’s confident all of the components for registration will be in place in time for a fall or spring launch.
— Ralph Pearce is a field editor for Country Guide at St. Marys, Ont.
Related story:
Dow may hold back Enlist corn in Canada, Jan. 23, 2013
