For Biotech Varieties, The Sky Is The Limit

Mar 07, 2013

Good seeds make a good crop. Biotechnology improves the crop of seeds available, providing farmers with new ways to combat weeds and insects, overcome agronomic challenges and produce more nutritious food to better meet customer demands.

Richard Fordyce, checkoff farmer-leader and Missouri soybean farmer, recently talked with Beyond the Bean about the endless opportunities offered by biotechnology.

Q: Richard, you’ve served as team lead for the United Soybean Board’s Biotech Initiative. Could you tell us about this initiative and its purpose?

A: It was something the board felt we needed to be more involved in, educating others and ourselves about the advantages of biotech. So one of our main goals was to try to educate not only folks who are writing regulations in foreign trading-partner countries, but also farmers, the media and consumers here and in other countries.

Q: Biotech education has been a focus of the checkoff. How has the initiative reached these audiences?

A: We’ve held what we call international farmer dialogues and had farmers from USB go to other countries to talk about biotech. We also invited farmers and regulators from other countries to the United States to learn about biotech. We developed a science teachers’ curriculum to teach kids about biotech. Basically, we’ve planted the seed and are waiting for harvest.

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Over the past several weeks, much of the U.S. Midwest has experienced prolonged episodes of extreme heat, a trend also observed in other major corn-producing regions of North America such as eastern South Dakota, southern Ontario, and parts of Kansas and Missouri. These high-temperature events can place significant physiological stress on maize (Zea mays L.), which is cultivated on approximately 90 million acres across the United States, with leading production in Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, and Minnesota. Like all maize, Bayer’s PRECEON™ Smart Corn System is subject to transpiration-driven water loss under high heat. However, this system incorporates agronomic traits designed to improve standability through enhanced stalk strength, thereby reducing lodging risk during stress conditions. Furthermore, the system supports precision agriculture practices by enabling more targeted fertilizer and crop protection applications. This approach not only helps to optimize input efficiency but also contributes to maintaining or increasing yield potential under variable environmental stresses such as heat waves, which are becoming more frequent in corn belt and fringe production regions.