Swiss firm develops rival to Monsanto seed
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Saturday, February 20, 1999
By Robert Steyer
Of The Post-Dispatch
A major competitor of Monsanto Co., the Swiss life sciences giant Novartis,
said Friday its scientists had developed a new technology for herbicide-tolerant
seeds.
However, company executives said commercial release of the new product
won't take place until 2003. Field trials are expected to begin in two years.
U.S. corn is the first target. Novartis also is looking at several crops, including
soybeans, wheat, rice, canola and cotton.
Novartis officials added that they expect the Environmental Protection Agency
to approve within four years a new weedkiller that would be sprayed over
these herbicide-tolerant crops.
Life science companies, most notably Monsanto, have moved to create crop
protection systems in which farmers buy seed using a certain company's
technology and then use the company's herbicide.
Monsanto is the industry leader in this strategy with its Roundup Ready
technology, in which farmers agree to use the company's Roundup family of
weedkillers on bioengineered crops such as soybeans, cotton and corn.
Novartis officials, speaking at a convention of corn and soybean growers in
Albuquerque, N.M., provided details about their science but offered few hints
about marketing strategies.
"I'd like to leave the door open relative to that," said one executive, Carroll
Moseley, when asked if Novartis would mimic Monsanto's policy affecting
growers using Roundup Ready crops. "That will have to come with discussions
with our marketing group."
Those discussions will have important economic consequences: Several other
companies make herbicides like the one Novartis is developing for its
herbicide-tolerant seed. These weedkillers are nicknamed PPO inhibitors.
Novartis officials say laboratory tests show their experimental herbicide offers
some advantages over existing PPO inhibitors. They also claim some
advantages over some big broad-spectrum weedkillers, including glyphosate,
the key ingredient in Roundup.
Novartis scientists discovered a gene that, when inserted into a plant, stops the
PPO inhibitor from killing the plant. They call it the Acuron gene.
The impact on Monsanto is hard to assess now. The company has been making
deals with several competitors to lessen the impact of losing patent protection
on glyphosate. The patent expires in September 2000.
Copyright (c) 1999, St. Louis Post-Dispatch |
