The passion in BASF’s Christoph Wegner’s voice is unmistakable. Even if you slow down the tape, his German-accented speech is still quick and urgent, apt for a corporate powerhouse scientist who is barely out of his 40s. As head of crop protection research and development at one of the world’s biggest agchem companies, Wegner is a driving force behind a pipeline valued at $3.24 billion, a figure that has risen one-third since 2008, driven by its Kixor herbicide and F500 fungicide. In a recent interview at BASF’s sprawling Ludwigshafen, Germany headquarters, Wegner talked about the power of a new insecticide in development, and how a harsher regulatory environment can be great for ag – as long as emotions don’t get in the way.
FCI：你正在进行的最有趣的发展是什么？
韦格纳： We are very committed at BASF in all of the indications – insecticides, herbicides and fungicides – and there are innovations going to come. We have an insecticide that we are developing in collaboration with a Japanese company. We hope we could bring it to market in 2016, which means we have everything done and ready in 2013. But then the authorities will need three years to read all the papers.
FCI: 它是针对什么市场开发的？
韦格纳： This is for aphids, whiteflies and piercing, sucking insects. It’s for all over the world – also in the US. The focus for insecticides is not so much on row crops, it’s more for specialties. We are very proud of it because it’s very strong. I would say [the dose rate] is pretty close to a new world record. We will achieve it – we are already at around 10/20 grams per hectare which is really strong. It’s not a purely synthetic molecule. It’s done by fermentation with bacteria and fungi, so it’s really made from nature. That’s going to come in the insecticide arena. In the herbicide and fungicide arena, we are just having new innovations to the market. There is great new stuff going to come, but not everything is written and patents disclosed so far, but rest assured it will be a very committed year. We will continue to write a very strong story on these indications.
FCI：你需要为不同的市场定制多少，比如法规？在此过程中您必须做出很多改变吗？
韦格纳： I would say the regulations are not so different from region to region. What we want to have first of all – completely independent from regulations – we want to have something which is sustainable, which is safe to environment, to applicators, to consumers. It has to be safe. If you have that in hand, in most of the regions in parts of the world, there is common sense applied. You will then be able to convince authorities that you have a safe and sustainable product and you will get the registration. In some regions, like Europe/EU27, they are overdoing things once in a while. This is sometimes beyond being reasonable, but this is the only exception we would have.
FCI：考虑到开发作物保护产品所需的时间，这是否让您在开发过程中倒退？
韦格纳： To be honest there aren’t too many cases where we have to change because of a regulation which was in the middle of the process, where something was hindering registerability. Sometimes, if there is a reregistration wave, and the legislation has changed in between, the industry has problems to get continuation of some chemistries. This is happening once in a while to us.
But as I said before to another colleague, I don’t have a problem with improving the regulations. Actually, I like them rather than I fear them because it’s good for innovation. If it is not based on science and on calculations, then what is the change? If it’s not fuzzy or vague or ambiguous, then it’s good for innovation. It puts pressure on old chemistry and it motivates us to look for the next generation of chemistry. Less chemistry, cleaner, less off-target effects: this is great for research, and it’s why I don’t have a problem with it. Also, I think history has shown that we could always replace the old generations with the new generation. Look what we can sometimes do. Imagine the [BASF insecticide in development] is only 10 mg/hectare – this is not even a spoon, it’s a tip of a knife per hectare!
Controlling a certain pest that is a problem on the field – and having a very nice and clean regulatory profile – this, for me, is sustainability. This is innovation. And this is supported also by tougher rigors in legislation and regulation. But I emphasize: it has to be based on science, based on risk assessments and not based on fears and emotions, and sometimes Europe is more playing on this fear and emotion side, not on science, and this is hard for me to handle.
FCI: 你觉得环境变差了吗？
韦格纳: I don’t see the problem in the US. I like it: it’s based on science, it’s tough. It’s based on science and risk assessment. In Europe, yes, it’s getting tougher. I’ll give you one example: we had a change in legislation two or three years ago, when the European Parliament made the decision and they invented cut-off criteria. If you have an endocrine disruptor, then it’s a cut-off. You don’t do a risk analysis. What is the real risk to the environmental applicator? You just say it’s out. It’s out and over. This crucifies us scientifically. Otherwise, you could say, ‘What is the hazard of electricity in the bathroom – you could die? It’s a cut-off. What is the risk of flying in an airplane? It could fall down – death. It’s not acceptable, you cannot fly.’ You have to look to the risk. If the risk is acceptable and it’s extremely low to everybody – that is, for me, the scientific approach. On top of it, the European Parliament said OK, endocrine disruption is a cut-off. But it doesn’t know how to define endocrine disruption. So, they implemented a scientific body that now has to do the job of finding a good definition of endocrine disruption.
FCI: 事后呢？
韦格纳: In 2013-14, they will come up the first draft. After that, I don’t know what is going to come. If I have every chemical may have endocrine effects at very high and artificial concentrations. Is it already a problem? I don’t think so. So this is not good.
FCI：到目前为止，您在巴斯夫的职业生涯中最有趣的部分是什么？
韦格纳: BASF – they put me, a researcher, into the middle of East Europe where I was responsible for the agchem business for 30 countries – Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Turkey, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, etc. – that was exciting. Another high point would be if we could find the next glyphosate. I wouldn’t mind working on that.