Dow AgroSciences, Syngenta To Cross License Traits
April 7, 2009 Syngenta and Dow AgroSciences, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Co., have agreed to cross license their respective corn traits for commercialization within their branded seed businesses. Stacking Dow AgroSciences’ Herculex and Syngenta’s Agrisure will offer your grower-customers new choices and refuge reductions.
The agreement will allow both companies to maximize the value of their technologies and to bring greater choice and flexibility to growers.
Under the terms of the agreement, Syngenta will receive global non-exclusive licenses, with stacking rights, to Dow AgroSciences’ Herculex I Insect Protection for broad lepidopteran control and to Herculex RW for corn rootworm control.
Additionally, Dow AgroSciences will receive global non-exclusive licenses with stacking rights to Syngenta’s Agrisure GT trait for glyphosate tolerance, and to its insect control traits Agrisure CB/LL (Corn Borer/LibertyLink) for corn borer and Agrisure RW for corn rootworm. The licenses also include access to Syngenta’s Agrisure Vipter trait for broad lepidoptera and to a second generation trait for corn rootworm control.
Pending EPA approval, the agreement paves the way for the industry’s first reduced-refuge stack in Midwestern corn featuring a combination of functionally and structurally different proteins: Cry proteins (Agrisure CB/LL, Herculex I) and a Vip protein (the Agrisure Viptera event). EPA recently recognized this technology combination by approving a nationwide 20 percent refuge for hybrid stacks containing the Agrisure Viptera event and either the Agrisure 3000GT triple stack or the Agrisure GT/CB/LL stack. This is a reduction from the 50 percent refuge previously required in corn and cotton-growing areas in the Southern United States.
Davor Pisk, chief operating officer of Syngenta Seeds, says, “We are very pleased to have reached this agreement which significantly expands the options available to growers while further demonstrating the value of our proprietary technology. The combination of Herculex Insect Protection traits with our Agrisure portfolio represents a major advance in insect control. From 2011 we plan to offer our U.S. customers multiple modes of action targeting refuge reduction and improved efficacy.”
Jerome Peribere, president and CEO of Dow AgroSciences, says, “With the combination of technologies, corn growers will benefit from increased flexibility through their preferred trait platforms, and we continue to be pleased that growers find the industry-leading Herculex technology to be a valuable option to increase productivity due to improved pest protection.”
Financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed.
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