KANSAS CITY (Reuters) – DuPont’s agricultural unit has formed an alliance in sub-Saharan Africa to collaborate on development of higher yielding corn varieties that need less fertilizer.
DuPont’s Pioneer Hi-Bred unit will contribute gene technology in work led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center and funded with $19.5 million in grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID.
Along with Pioneer Hi-Bred, the corn partnership includes the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) and the South African Agricultural Research Council.
The group hopes to use transgenics and other biotechnology tools to create and share new corn varieties using fertilizer more efficiently and help small farmers get higher yields, even where soils are poor and little commercial fertilizer is used.
