In just a few days Syngenta Seeds will be holding the grand opening celebration of their new headquarters in Minnetonka, MN and Cindy will be on site to document the celebration in pictures and with interviews.

While I was attending the Farm Progress Show I visited with Syngenta’s Bruce Battles and Tracy Mader in their exhibit about one of their upcoming new traits called Agrisure Viptera. They believe that this product, which is due out in 2010, will take a corn grower’s yields to the next level.

Bruce says that when they were doing research on the product they discovered a whole new class of vegetative insecticidal proteins.

Agrisure Viptera™ Broad-Spectrum Lepidopteran Trait

The Agrisure Viptera trait is the first of many new traits being developed from an entirely new class of Vegetative Insecticidal Proteins (VIP) within the Agrisure system of high-performance corn traits.

During the development of Agrisure Viptera they’ve looked at the collection of pests which they call the Multi-Pest Complex and found that it has cost American corn growers up to $1.1 Billion/year in lost yield and grain quality. They believe Agrisure Viptera can help mitigate that risk for the grower.

You can listen to my interview with Bruce and Tracy here: