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Innovation key to pipeline of herbicide productsBy Holly Martin
"It's innovation, innovation, innovation," said Dr. Friedrich Berschauer, chairman of the board of management for Bayer CropScience. It was a common theme during the Bayer CropScience Herbicide Innovation Tour to Germany. The tour, sponsored by Bayer, took crop consultants, seed company representatives, retailers and agricultural journalists to the world headquarters in Monheim, Germany to see first-hand the breadth of their company. The key to innovation Dr. Berschauer said, is research and development. "We have the highest R and D budget in the industry," he said. The company conducts research at nine different sites through out the world and boasts research and development team of 3,600 people. Innovation for Bayer is leading to new products for the American farmer. One of those new products coming to the U.S. is Laudis herbicide. First launched in Austria and Hungary, Laudis is a broad spectrum post emergence corn herbicide. Bayer CropScience expects registration approval in the U.S. in the coming weeks. Approval also recently came for Bayer's new cereal grain product, Huskie. It is the first new mode of action in cereals in 20 years, said Nick Duncan, global product manager for Bayer CropScience. The market for Huskie will be will be spring and winter wheat, durum, barley and triticale. It can be applied to actively growing crops from fully expanded first true leaf up to flag leaf emergence. While LibertyLink is not new, the need by growers for an alternative to glyphosate in soybeans is becoming even more important, said Rob Shrick, a herbicide portfolio manager at Bayer CropScience. "Weed resistance is becoming a bigger concern all of the time," he said. A LibertyLink rotation provides a way to avoid weed resistance and maintaining the viability of Roundup Ready. Liberty herbicide is effective on weeds which are resistant or tolerant to glyphosate because it contains a unique mode of action. A U.S. soybean launch is expected in 2009 or 2010. Part of the tour took the group the R and D facilities for Bayer CropScience in Frankfurt. "Sixty to 100 compounds are tested every year throughout the world in practical applications," said Hermann Stubler, head of herbicide research for Bayer CropScience. "We try to bring one to the market each year." But the testing process begins much earlier back in the lab. Tools such as Ultra High Throughput Invivo Screening or (uHTVS) have made the ability to test as many as 400,000 compounds more quickly. "Where we used to need a greenhouse to test a number of compounds, we can now test 96 compounds in one plate," Stubler said. The group saw the testing first hand as an machine automatically applied compounds to 96 wells on a plate no bigger than 20 square inches. The scientists are then are able to do an initial test and decide which compounds need further testing in the greenhouse and on into field applications. Each step eliminates potential candidates. Bayer is also doing extensive research in to safener technology. Safeners are added to herbicides to reduce crop injury. Stubler said Bayer CropScience is the only company who has brought new safener technology to the market since 2001. Bayer products on the market with safener technology include Puma, Atlantis and Olympus flex. "Safeners significantly increase the success rate of in herbicide research," Stubler said. And ultimately the more options farmers have, the more successful they will be. "Our innovation commitment is focused on grower needs," said Tim Zurline, U.S. director of marketing herbicides and fungicides for Bayer CropScience. Holly Martin can be reached by phone at 1-800-452-7171 ext. 1806 or e-mail at hmartin@hpj.com. 11/12/07 Date: 11/6/07
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