Agriscience Explained

What is happening in agriscience today that we will be talking about 100 years from now? While it’s impossible to answer that question with certainty, there is a technology that has the potential to impact our industry in the next century as much or even more than hybridization changed the game over the past century. That technology is genome editing. The promise of this technology is very real and today you’re going to hear firsthand accounts of what changed in 2012 and 2013 to make all of this possible, what did it look like to test the technology in plant breeding, and what does the strategy look like to turn this science into better solutions. 

“In 2012, we had the seminal paper from Jennifer Doudna, and the entire scientific community was getting very excited with how we could use a technology like CRISPR gene editing to precisely rewrite DNA to get to the end outcome that we want much faster than before… The question we were asking in Pioneer was, yes, we have the technology, and every week you see new improvements in efficiencies of the technology, but where do you apply it?” - Nandini Krishnamurthy, Ph.D. 

In this episode, we go behind the scenes to peek into how genome editing arrived on the scene in agriculture, where it stands currently, and why many scientists are calling it a revolutionary technology. Joining us are two people that have been a part of the emergence of CRISPR, the powerful tool that enables scientists to edit the DNA of living organisms. Dr. Nandini Krishnamurthy is the director of external technologies and gene editing ecosystem development at Corteva Agriscience. She has a background in genetics and cell biology and after finishing her PhD at Texas A&M, she focused on computational biology. Also joining us is Dr. Neal Gutterson. Gutterson has a background in executive leadership with biotechnology companies and joined Pioneer in 2014 as the vice president of research and development. He was instrumental in laying the groundwork for genome editing in plant breeding. 

“ To be able to fashion the strategy around how we would use and deploy genome editing in, you know, biotech/breeding, but then also how we position it in terms of the marketplace and farmers and other companies seemed like an incredible opportunity. ” - Neal Gutterson, Ph.D.

By proving the concept, communicating with the public and allowing access to the technology, a lot of the groundwork for gene editing in agriculture was already starting to be formed. However, the big question many of you still may be wondering is: what do the farmers think of this? For this we’ll turn back to the farmer we featured on episode 28 of this podcast: Corey Loesson. And while he doesn’t speak for all farmers, it’s safe to assume it echoes the perspective of many if not most out there. 

“ We're really talking about accelerated plant breeding, which plant breeding has been going on since agriculture started really, you know, centuries. And we're just getting better at it. And that better part enables us to produce food more efficiently ultimately. ” - Corey Loesson

A few takeaways from this episode: 
This technology is revolutionary and it’s here. There is a strong case to be made that with the right regulatory framework, this could be every bit as game-changing in the next century as hybridization was in the past century. 
This is not GMO 2.0 - it’s advanced breeding. These are two distinctly different approaches, but we also have some lessons learned from transgenics with regards to communication and engagement that I think will be important for the emergence of this biotechnology in crops. 
While farmers are not growing gene edited crops today, there has already been tremendous progress made toward utilizing this technology for their benefit. The difference between cooking a meal and serving it as Nandini said. We truly are at the end of the beginning and ready to enter this next chapter of commercially available gene edited crops. 
Agriscience Explained is brought to you by Corteva Agriscience and hosted by Tim Hammerich. This show is produced by Clint Pilcher, Rayda Krell and Ann Leonard. Jaime Hammerich helps to edit these podcasts, and the music was composed by Dmitri Volkov. Subscribe for more Agriscience Explained: From Science to Solutions.

In today’s episode, we’re following a molecule around the world, from being discovered in Japan to being developed in the United States to becoming a solution for farmers in the United Kingdom. Joining us is one of those farmers in the UK, Julian Gibbons. Julian has seen a variety of fungicide solutions come and go for important wheat diseases like Septoria tritici, or speckled leaf blotch. He’s really excited about the potential for a relatively newly registered product derived from a natural compound called Inatreq Active™. And the story of the need for Inatreq and the road to getting this product to farmers is the focus of today’s episode. 

Kevin Meyer, Ph.D., a discovery chemist for 26 years at Corteva, will give us the behind-the-scenes look at how Inatreq was initially discovered and developed, then shelved, only to be brought back from the archives with a new approach to turning some fascinating science into a solution farmers like Julian can use. 

“ With this new product concept in hand, we were like, "’Okay, if we can make a fungicide with this, you know, to control Septoria tritici in wheat, it probably is gonna end up controlling other things, but we can make a product out of that.’ …And the first time I ever heard that, I turned to a coworker of mine down the biology department and I said, ‘I know a molecule that does that. We should look at that again.’ And that was UK-2A …and we found one of those pro drug molecules that worked really, really well. We brought it out to the field, controlled Septoria really well.” - Kevin Meyer, Ph.D.

“ It does what it says. It's good control. We've never had as a product to actually use, we've never had an issue with it or anything like that. And it diversifies our control.” - Julian Gibbons
Takeaways from today’s episode: 
You never know where the next mode of action is going to come from. It’s so important that companies like Corteva Agriscience are constantly investing in the discovery process to try to find molecules like UK-2A that will help farmers diversify their approaches. 
It’s not as simple as just finding a molecule. The story of UK-2A shows how tedious and burdensome and in some cases frustrating the process can be. It’s no wonder why it takes so much time and investment to come up these novel solutions
The importance of formulation. The active ingredients get a lot of the spotlight because they are what gives us the outcomes we want, but Kevin is exactly right: it’s the formulation that will make or break a product. I wonder how many promising active ingredients don’t make it to commercialization because the formulation wasn’t quite right. Seems like a lot of opportunity here as well. 
Agriscience Explained is brought to you by Corteva Agriscience and hosted by Tim Hammerich. This show is produced by Clint Pilcher, Rayda Krell and Ann Leonard. Jaime Hammerich and Grant Bolton edit these podcasts, and the music was composed by Dmitri Volkov. Subscribe for more Agriscience Explained: From Science to Solutions.

We celebrate the 100th year anniversary of Pioneer Seeds, and take a look back at the history of hybridization. The process may seem simple: to take two varieties or even species and cross them together to create more desirable offspring. But the concept of controlled hybridization, intentionally transferring pollen from a chosen male parent to a chosen female parent, is relatively new in the history of agriculture. But it has been nothing short of revolutionary. 

This episode explores some of this history and poses questions like: what happened in the early 1900s with hybridization that opened the door for the formation of Pioneer and eventually the tremendous growth in yields over the past 100 years? What did adoption of hybrid corn look like in the early days and what can it teach us about adoption of new farm technologies today? Why has corn been the model for hybridization and what might still be possible for crops? 

“Since 1926 our population has gone up by four times, from about two billion to eight billion (people). But the productivity of corn has gone up almost twelve times…Also, we've taken this technology, as Marc Albertsen has talked about, and we've used it for other crops and made them much more productive.” - Lance Gibson

We’re asking these questions and many others of three experts on today’s episode: Corteva Agriscience Agronomy Training Manager Dr.  Lance Gibson, Saskatchewan farmer Corey Loessin and retired Pioneer employee Dr. Marc Albertsen, who was the first person hired in the newly formed biotechnology department at Pioneer in 1981, and went on to lead the agronomic traits group at the company. 

A few takeaways from this episode: 
How much genetics generally and hybridization specifically has contributed to the incredible productivity increases from farmers in the past 100 years
How the learnings from hybrid corn have translated into developing hybrids in other crops, and that we’re still in the very early days of realizing the benefits of hybrids in crops like wheat and canola.
We still don’t fully understand heterosis. There are likely abundant opportunities to be discovered once scientists better understand this process.   

Agriscience Explained is brought to you by Corteva Agriscience and hosted by Tim Hammerich. This show is produced by Clint Pilcher, Rayda Krell and Ann Leonard. Jaime Hammerich and Grant Bolton edit these podcasts, and the music was composed by Dmitri Volkov. Subscribe for more Agriscience Explained: From Science to Solutions.

What does it take to break the world soybean yield record? Today we talk to soybean yield record-holder Alex Harrell and soybean breeder Don Kyle. Alex farms in southwest Georgia with his dad where they primarily grow soybeans, corn, wheat and watermelon. In 2023, he became the first farmer to record a soybean yield of over 200 bushels per acre. The next year he beat his own record coming in at 218.2856 bushels per acre. It’s an incredible achievement for anyone, but it’s even more impressive when you consider that Alex farms in an area that doesn’t generally grow a lot of soybeans. 
“ We did a lot of studying, a lot of class, made a lot of mistakes, and watched a lot of beans rot in our humidity. You know when the things do line up, we have a lot of yield potential there as well. ” - Alex Harrell
Farmers like Alex have had to learn these lessons and refine their system over years while experimenting with and matching up the right genetics for their fields. Don Kyle became interested in soybean breeding in the early 90s and has since dedicated his career in plant breeding to the crop. Today he’s a soybean breeder and Evaluation Zone Lead for the Eastern US at Corteva Agriscience based in Princeton, Illinois. He says even though he’s focused on soybeans for over 30 years, he’s more passionate than ever about the crop. Don thinks we might see more hybrid soybeans in the future, similar to what we’re currently seeing with wheat. But for now, farmers aren’t using hybrid soybeans so it’s even more impressive what farmers like Alex Harrell have been able to achieve in terms of yield growth over the years. 
“ It's very easy to produce soybean seed because they self-pollinate themselves. The problem is to produce hybrid seed is really difficult. So making a cross between two different soybean varieties today still requires using tweezers and sometimes magnifying glasses so you could see the flower parts the best. It's a very tedious job.” - Don Kyle
A few takeaways from this episode: 

Incredible yield growth is possible without hybrids in soybeans
The significance of detailed management allows for more precise practices that create the best yields
Successful genetics is more about varieties with resilience rather than yield magic to account for the many factors that can’t be controlled

Agriscience Explained is brought to you by Corteva Agriscience and hosted by Tim Hammerich. This show is produced by Clint Pilcher, Rayda Krell and Ann Leonard. Jaime Hammerich and Grant Bolton edit these podcasts, and the music was composed by Dmitri Volkov. Subscribe for more Agriscience Explained: From Science to Solutions.

In today's episode, we explore how agriscience has created a more valuable soybean. A soybean that gets the farmer more money, a dairy farm who buys it more profit, and has the added benefit of supporting a local agricultural economy. This is the story of Plenish soybeans. 
We are joined by Dairy scientist Dr. Bill Mahanna who works for Corteva Agriscience and manages Pioneer’s Global Nutrition Sciences Team. His team works with any product that might ultimately be fed to livestock, like corn, silage, and soybeans. Also joining us is Craig Phelps, who owns Edgewood Farms, Edgewood Grain, and Linwood Commodities based in Western New York. Craig buys, stores and roasts Plenish soybeans and sells them to dairy farmers in his area. Together we discuss components of dairy science, nutrition, agronomy, genetics, supply chain economics and more. It’s a great demonstration of how agriscience innovation can lead to better economic outcomes. 
To understand the Plenish story, it’s important to first understand the dairy science behind why they’re so desirable for dairy cows relative to commodity soybeans or other competing ingredients. Thirty nine years ago, Bill Mahanna became the first dairy-focused person hired by Pioneer. He grew up on a dairy farm in upstate New York and was a college professor of dairy science before joining the company. He says these high oleic soybeans, now known as Plenish soybeans, were developed about 14 years ago but initially the target market was food ingredients. Then they started to realize the potential this innovation could have in dairy rations.
“ It's a dense form of energy, it's a safe oil, it brings in the amino acid we need and can potentially, depending on how the ration is balanced, actually increase the butter fat content of milk.…It's a potentially homegrown feed that we process on the farm that's really relatively inexpensive for us compared to some of the other things that we might put in the diet like blood meal or palm fat or things like that.” - Dr. Bill Mahanna
So these high oleic soybeans found a very important place in a dairy cow’s ration. Dairy farmers want to feed certain fats to not only provide complete nutrition but to also boost the butterfat percentage of the milk that they sell to achieve a premium price. But the type of fat that they feed is really important, and that’s why Plenish soybeans have really taken off. 
Craig Phelps has worked as both a dairyman and crop producer. Through these experiences he has seen the dairy industry from multiple perspectives and today roasting Plenish soybeans for local dairies is a big part of his business. The biggest problem he has found is there not being enough Plenish soybeans for the demand.
“ That's what I recognized in the Plenish is if we could create a differentiated product, cut down the transportation, basically buy that product locally, process it locally, and sell it locally. We're cutting a lot out of the middle there, and hopefully everybody wins be it the grower, us as a processor in the middle and the dairyman getting a high quality product.” - Craig Phelps

A few takeaways from this episode: 
The opportunity we have to create new differentiated products that are innovative and unlock new value, but also work within the established system. 
Secondly is the fact that through agriscience, we can find ways to allow producers to capture and keep more of the value from what they’re producing. Rather than taking commodity beans and trying to convert them into better feed through extensive processing, genetics are sort of “baking” those solutions into the crop. 
The impact this is having on local communities: farmers receiving more per bushel, soybeans being consumed domestically that might have gone export, and a local company like Edgewood Grain connecting the supply chain. 

Agriscience Explained is brought to you by Corteva Agriscience and hosted by Tim Hammerich. This show is produced by Clint Pilcher, Rayda Krell and Ann Leonard. Jaime Hammerich and Grant Bolton edit these podcasts, and the music was composed by Dmitri Volkov. Subscribe for more Agriscience Explained: From Science to Solutions.