Monsanto Buys Westbred LLC

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With this weeks announcement that Monsanto is buying Westbred LLC it is very clear that the biotech industry will have a say in the future direction of the wheat breeding business. As I have mentioned on this site before, pull type traits like drought and nitrogen use efficiency will be big components of the Monsanto breeding program in all crop types and not just wheat.

Click Here to see the comments to me from @MonsantoCo regarding the focus

With the recent push for biotech wheat by the biotech wheat coalition and this announcement, you can ultimately expect all of the biotech industry to heavily invest in wheat breeding over the next twenty years. With Syngenta, Dow Agro, and Monsanto all involved in wheat breeding the objective will be increased value creation for the whole value chain. After attending the CSTA summer meeting this past week in Whistler, it is quite clear that the industry must invest more in wheat breeding if we are going to see some of the benefits found in other crop types.

Based on the fact biotech wheat is not accepted globally it will be interesting to see what moves these breeding programs make in the meantime in the conventional plant breeding areas. One thing is for sure the world of wheat genetics is getting very interesting and this story is not quite over yet. More to come definitely.

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Categories: Seed / Wheat

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