Our friends at Bayer are working hard to get the next generation of soybean traits in growers’ hands in the next couple of years. At the recent Ag Issues Forum, Chuck caught up with Allen Gent, who is Bayer CropScience’s U.S. soybean product manager for soybean seed and trade. He said they’re working on weed resistant traits, such as their LibertyLink seed that allows growers to spray Liberty herbicide in crop for non-selective postemergence control of the toughest weeds, and a couple of new traits in the form of what they’re calling Balance Bean and Balance GT soybeans. He says since these are GMO products, the approval process is quite long.
“The regulatory process has gotten a lot more lengthy for all companies involved,” which he admits is really a testament to how careful regulators and the industry are in putting out any new technology. He added that there has been a shift in the 10-12 year process that it takes from concept to product on the shelf, where most of that time used to be in the early development stages and is now taken up by the regulatory approval process at the end of development. Allen expects these latest traits to be approved and ready to use in the next couple of years.
Further down the road, he said they’ll be focusing on fighting more weed and disease resistance traits.
You can check out Chuck’s interview with Allen here: Interview with Allen Gent, Bayer CropScience
