Plant Impact plc today announced that it has signed an agreement with Bayer CropScience to develop yield enhancing technologies for soy cultivation.
The agreement encompasses a multi-year partnership for Plant Impact to develop, and Bayer CropScience to potentially commercialise, new products in the soy markets of the Americas, including Brazil, the United States and Argentina. Growers in these three crucial markets are expected to cultivate more than 85 million hectares of soy in the 2014/15 cropping season, and the Americas are responsible for more than 90% of the global export trade in soybeans, soy meal and soybean oil.
Plant Impact develops products to complement and enhance the effects of modern crop protection programs, enabling growers to deliver consistently higher marketable yields. These current and pipeline technologies include both foliar crop sprays and industrial seed treatments which improve the soy plant’s ability to withstand stress at various critical growth stages. Bayer CropScience markets a full range of products to soy growers including high value seeds and innovative crop protection solutions based on both chemical and biological modes of action.
This agreement supplements the August 2014 agreement between the parties, whereby Bayer markets Veritas®, a product developed by Plant Impact which improves the soy plant’s capacity to fix pods and fill grains at critical growth stages. This newly-announced agreement extends the initial period of the Brazil Veritas® agreement to ten years and also grants Bayer CropScience exclusive first rights of commercialistion over Plant Impact’s current and future pipeline of products for soybeans throughout the Americas. Bayer will make payments to Plant Impact of up to $9 million, of which $3 million will be paid initially and up to $6 million paid against various milestones. The terms for the ultimate commercialisation of new products will be agreed between the two parties at a later date.
“This new partnership builds on the outstanding collaboration between our companies in Brazil, where Veritas® has been successfully launched by Bayer CropScience in the 2014/15 season,” commented John Brubaker, Plant Impact’s CEO. “We are keen to align our product pipeline in soy with the full solution of Bayer CropScience, creating the potential for an integrated, season-long program offering to growers of this important world crop.”
“Our objective is to offer soy growers a complete, integrated solution, from planting through harvest. Building on our platform of trusted crop protection and seed products, we aim to further complement our soy program with new technologies to increase yield” said Hartmut van Lengerich, Head of Cereals & Fungicides and responsible for Crop Efficiency at Bayer CropScience.
For more information on Plant Impact and their partnership with Bayer CropScience, you can view the full press release here.
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