Proprietary Mixtures Continue to Dominate Markets
9 November 2011 As crop protection companies bank on new mixture products to expand and enhance their chemical portfolios, many continue to increase their R&D budgets to accommodate a surge in demand for seed and trait technologies.
In addition, companies are beginning to eliminate older products to develop new formulations to streamline their crop protection businesses. The leading crop protection companies indicate a growth in their R&D budgets for seed treatments and fungicides to meet demand for higher value products.
“Commodity crop prices are at an elevated level, which has led farmers to take a ‘maximize yield’ approach even if additional inputs are required,” says Moni Hancock, Dow AgroSciences R&D communications leader.
R&D expenditures in seed and trait technology rose to $2.9 billion in 2010, and are likely to continue growing, according to Phillips McDougall.
Meeting Demand
In order to focus on optimizing yields with newer technologies, R&D companies such as Bayer are reducing their extensive product portfolios and developing products of higher value to farmers.
“To enable further growth, we are currently restructuring and streamlining our crop protection business by phasing out older products, increasing our focus on key brand families, extending our geographic presence further into emerging markets and developing our supply chain operations to a position of industry leadership,” says Utz Klages, Bayer CropScience spokesperson for crop protection and environmental science.
Bayer CropScience plans to increase its total R&D budget (Agchem/BioScience) 20% to $1.1 billion by 2015 and will introduce four new molecules that aim to improve the quality of harvest and provide farmers with more flexibility in use. Bayer’s new rollouts include:
■ Luna (fluopyram) — a fungicide for problematic diseases in fruit and vegetables,
■ Emesto (penflufen) — a fungicidal seed treatment for potatoes,
■ EverGol (penflufen) — a fungicidal treatment for broad acre crops,
■ Sivanto (flupyradifurone) — a compound for sucking pests in fruit, vegetables and broad acre crops.
In addition, BASF is planning to launch two new fungicide products: Xemium, which has an active ingredient for broad-spectrum disease control and Initium, which has an environmentally friendly chemistry with a new mode of action for vine and vegetable growers.
DuPont, which includes Pioneer Hi-Bred, is investing about 60%, or $800 million of its total annual R&D budget to improve food production. The company expects to register a new family of cross-spectrum insect control that includes Cyazypyr, a second-generation ryanodine receptor insecticide. Researchers are also in the development stage of a new active ingredient to follow Cyazypyr.
“Trait improvement is one of the largest components of that R&D focus, but improved traits will not eliminate the need for effective crop protection,” says Julia Wheeler, director of research & development for DuPont. “We do expect the trend toward mixed products to continue in order to meet the changing needs of growers around the world as they work to control a shifting weed spectrum and avoid development of weed resistance to valuable herbicides.”
Industrywide, there are currently more than 60 input trait projects in the development phase, according to Phillips McDougall. A significant number of those targeted to insect control are still in the discovery phase.
Monsanto is exploring a variety of seed treatment technologies to meet demand for insect and disease control, nematode management, plant health agents, interaction of seed treatments with biotechnology traits, coatings, polymer systems and microencapsulation, as well as seed viability and storage.
Dow AgroSciences recently registered Refuge Advanced powered by SmartStax with the US Environmental Protection Agency and received approval from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The company expects a full commercial launch with a broad lineup of hybrids for sale for 2012 planting. The Enlist Weed Control System is Dow’s next project addressing herbicide resistance issues on the horizon.
“Farmers are becoming overwhelmed by weeds,” Hancock says. “The list of resistant and hard-to-control weeds has grown substantially during the past decade. Enlist is our industry’s next level of innovation that blends Dow AgroSciences’ unique expertise in traits and chemistry to address this challenge.”
Generic Sector
Proprietary formulations containing off-patent active ingredients are becoming increasingly critical to many companies’ portfolios to meet demand and battle resistance. Mixtures containing off-patent formulations continue to emerge.
Currently, 69.9% of industry sales can be attributed to R&D-driven companies. Of this, 23% of sales are derived from patented molecules and 46% are from products that are off-patent or generic products, according to Phillips McDougall. In 2010, the overall share of generic-focused companies remained stable, indicating a greater influence by the R&D-driven companies in the generic sector of the market.
“Glyphosate has been off-patent in the US for years, and our Roundup brand agricultural products remain the foundation of our crop protection business globally,” says John Combest, Monsanto media communications manager. “In the US, off-patent active ingredients like acetochlor are found in our popular TripleFLEX and Warrant herbicide formulations – both of which we’ve introduced in the last two years.”
DuPont emphasizes proprietary off-patent and mixture products containing sulfonylurea (SU) herbicides, which the company developed in the 1970s and have since been off-patent.
“As the SU active ingredients reached the end of the patent life but were still needed by growers, DuPont developed blended herbicide mixtures designed to meet the unique weed control needs of various regions,” Wheeler says.
Research Agreements
The leading R&D companies continue to enter collaborative agreements to help create new formulations and develop new seed and trait technologies.
Dow AgroSciences and M.S. Technologies submitted a three-gene herbicide-tolerant soybean for approval to the US Department of Agriculture in August. The soybean includes three herbicide tolerance genes stacked as part of a single genetic event in the soybean genome, according to the company. The trait package is expected to be available by mid-decade in Dow AgroSciences, M.S. Technologies and Mertec soybean varieties.
The phasing out of aldicarb (Temik) in some markets has also heightened awareness of the need for more options to control nematodes, Combest says. Monsanto acquired Divergence, a US-based biotech R&D company in February to address this loss. Divergence has been focusing its work on parasitic nematodes, including developing biotech traits for nematode control and nematicides with novel modes of action and superior safety profiles with the company since 2004.
Syngenta entered into an exclusive global technology partnership with Pasteuria Bioscience to battle nematodes. Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will develop bio-nematicide products based on the naturally occurring soil bacteria Pasteuria spp. This group of bacteria controls nematodes across a broad variety of crops, according to a company statement.
Syngenta and Bayer CropScience entered into an agreement in April 2011 to co-develop a HPPD herbicide tolerance trait for soybeans. The trait is in early development, and will be launched in North America in the second half of the decade. The new trait will provide a powerful mode of action for weed control and the management of weed resistance, particularly to glyphosate, according to the companies.
DuPont and Biotique Systems entered into a research alliance in May to accelerate genetic discovery in agricultural crops globally. Biotique will provide knowledge and access to its proprietary TITAN solution for next-generation sequence management, market analysis and genotype-to-phenotype association, according to the companies. DuPont unit Pioneer Hi-Bred will have access to the platform for agricultural applications and will retain all intellectual property for its genetic information and crops produced as a result of the alliance.
BASF and Monsanto Co. also agreed to collaborate on the advancement of dicamba-tolerant cropping systems in March. The pact will facilitate further development and commercialization of a dicamba-tolerant system, which includes innovative dicamba formulations proprietary to BASF and the dicamba-tolerant trait for soybeans, which is proprietary to Monsanto. The system is expected to be introduced in the United States and Canada around 2015, pending regulatory approvals, according to the companies.
“Partnerships provide opportunities to offer even more choices to farmers,” Combest says.
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