In the midst of the National Hockey League’s busiest wheeling and dealing season, two agricultural biotechnology heavyweights have announced a trade of their own.
Monsanto Company and Bayer CropScience have signed an agreement to share one another’s herbicide tolerance traits in canola.
Under the terms of the agreement, Monsanto grants Bayer access to its Genuity Roundup Ready trait and Bayer gives Monsanto access to its LibertyLink trait.
The pact includes future herbicide tolerance and other agronomic traits that may be introduced by either party for use in canola, such as yield enhancement, drought tolerance and nitrogen use efficiency.
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Brian Chorney, president of the Canadian Canola Growers Association, said the deal gives growers more tools in their toolbox.
“Whatever canola variety works best with your farm could be matched with whichever weed control system works best for you and your farm.”
He said the potential to seed a variety containing both traits would allow producers to leave their weed control decisions until they see what weeds are in the field.
Neil Arbuckle, Monsanto’s canola business development lead, said the agreement builds on Monsanto’s practice of broadly licensing its technologies.
“Canadian farmers will benefit from greater access to new traits and new technologies that will help ensure canola remains competitive in the global marketplace.”
Joachim Schneider, head of Bayer’s bioscience business unit, said the deal provides canola growers with greater choice and flexibility.
“LibertyLink and Genuity Roundup Ready are the two leading weed control systems available in the marketplace today and growers will be able to choose our seed with either system, or even both, in about three to four years,” he said.
Monsanto Canada spokesperson Trish Jordan said while Bayer is already working on introducing both traits into its InVigor hybrids, Monsanto has no plans to integrate the LibertyLink trait into its existing Roundup Ready varieties.
“We’re going to wait and we’re going to look at future opportunities to utilize that trait in our second generation Roundup Ready canola product,” she said.
“We’ll be further behind Bayer in terms of offering the stacked product in our DeKalb seed brand.”
Second generation Roundup Ready canola is expected to be commercially available in 2014-15 and may include a yield gene, a nitrogen use efficiency gene and the Liberty Link gene.
The agreement with Bayer comes at a time when a number of agricultural biotechnology companies are suing one another over patent infringement.
DuPont and Bayer recently resolved a dispute while DuPont and Monsanto are still fighting it out in court.
Jordan said in this case the two companies see mutual benefit in cross-licensing their canola traits.
“There are benefits in us having our trait on more canola acres than we currently do now because we are paid for our trait technology. If you expand the number of acres that have your trait in it, that’s going to be good for business,” she said.
Chorney said he is glad the agreement is non-exclusive, meaning either company can make similar deals with other seed providers.
“As a grower organization, we like to see as much competition as possible,” he said.
