BASF puts the brakes on hybrid wheat development for North America

BASF has decided to cease its activities in hybrid wheat seed development in North America, RealAgriculture has learned.

The company says it plans to refocus its efforts on the European markets where it sees “the greatest opportunity to successfully bring this innovation to farmers.”

BASF says it has made significant progress with hybrid wheat breeding and seed production research. In June of 2021, BASF officially launched the hybrid wheat brand Ideltis for the European and North American market, saying, at the time, that commercial release was expected in the middle of the decade.

“Despite the tremendous efforts of our expert teams, the results of our North American trials have not achieved the development goals we set to meet the needs of growers in Canada and the United States,” a company rep writes in an email to RealAgriculture.

The decision is part of a larger “rescoping and optimizing” of the company as a whole that will result in the reduction of staff.

The representative says that BASF “will increase the focus in some areas and consequently need to reduce the investment/ resourcing in other areas. This will lead, in selected cases, to re-adjustments of our investments, to structural measures and personnel reductions… When looking at the measures described, overall, about 230 positions are directly impacted.”