Monsanto Says Drought Tolerant Cotton, More Nutritious Broccoli in Pipeline
Mosanto, a leading provider of agriculture products for farming – on Thursday highlighted a diverse group of projects across its research and development platforms.
Solutions in the R&D pipeline included a way to make cotton drought tolerant and to battle lygus bugs that attack it. Other products include a more nutritious form of broccoli and a way to combat roundworms.
The firm says it aims to make agriculture more productive and profitable for farmers, and more sustainable. It uses a combination of breeding, biotechnology, and agronomic tools and solutions.
Robb Fraley, Monsanto’s Chief Technology Officer, says the firm is “excited about the record progress” the company has made “as the projects in our pipeline today will help us provide an even stronger toolkit of solutions to meet the needs of farmers in the future.”
Mosanto highlighted a number of platforms including, breeding platforms to develop seeds faster, biotechnology platforms designed to provide improved pest and weed management solutions.
The company also offers multiple modes of action for enhanced insect control and durability, and to target piercing-sucking insects in cotton, and an agronomic solutions platform to provide farmers with an additional tool for weed management and a novel nematicide chemistry designed to improve plant health.
Some of the products in its product pipeline include:
Biotechnology Agronomic Traits
Cotton Lygus Control (Advanced to Phase 2) would extend the spectrum of insect control to piercing-sucking lygus bugs, which damage bolls and reduce lint yield and quality.
Biotechnology Yield & Stress Traits
Drought-Tolerant Cotton (Advanced to Phase 2) - designed to deliver improved water use in cotton by providing yield stability in environments experiencing occasional or consistent water stress, which has the potential to reduce water needs on irrigated acres.
Breeding Traits
Beneforte Broccoli (Launching) - naturally contains two to three times the phytonutrient glucoraphanin compared with other leading broccoli varieties produced under similar growing conditions. This platform will help broccoli boost the body's antioxidant enzyme levels at least two times more than other broccoli.
Chemistry and Agronomic Systems
Nematicide Chemistry (Advanced to Phase 3) - providing farmers with an additional tool to control pressure against multiple nematode species, one of the largest unsolved pest problems in agriculture.