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Biotech / Medical : Monsanto Co. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dan Spillane who wrote (1229)	2/18/1999 12:20:00 PM
From: Anthony Wong	Respond to of 2539

Dan, good news indeed! Three cheers for the Aussies and Kiwis.

To: Dan Spillane who wrote (1229)	2/18/1999 1:35:00 PM
From: Anthony Wong	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2539

Novartis to Introduce Rival to Monsanto Crop Technology in 2003 Bloomberg News February 18, 1999, 12:38 p.m. ET Novartis to Introduce Rival to Monsanto Crop Technology in 2003 Albuquerque, New Mexico, Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Novartis AG, the world's biggest crop chemicals company, said it plans to launch a weed-killing system in 2003 aimed at stealing market share from rival Monsanto Co.'s Roundup Ready. Like Roundup Ready, the Novartis product will allow farmers who plant its genetically modified seeds to spray herbicides that kill weeds, but do no harm to the growing crop. Eric Kuhn, director of strategic marketing at Novartis, said the company plans to initially introduce the weed-control system for corn, although tests have shown that it can be used on a number of other crops, including wheat, soybeans, rice, canola, cotton, sorghum and sugar beets. ''One of our key marketing areas is corn, and we see this as a way of growing our share'' in the $1.5 billion U.S. corn herbicide market, Kuhn said. Novartis already sells corn that has been genetically altered to resist the European corn borer, an insect that destroys about 7 percent of the worldwide corn harvest every year. According to Kuhn, the Novartis product, which uses a novel type of weed killer, will act more quickly and last longer than the Monsanto system. ''It's a different class of chemicals and has some attributes that are different to what's out there now,'' Kuhn said of Novartis' herbicide. In the two years since it was introduced, St. Louis-based Monsanto Co.'s Roundup Ready soybeans, corn and cotton, have been widely adopted by farmers. Roundup Ready crops are resistant to Monsanto's best-selling Roundup herbicide, which comes off patent in the U.S. in 2000. AgrEvo's Liberty Link The only weed-killing product that competes now with Monsanto's Roundup Ready is Liberty Link by AgrEvo GmbH, a joint venture of German chemicals companies Hoechst AG and Schering AG. Liberty Link has a small share of the market for such products, however. Novartis said the new weed-killing system is based on a gene discovered by scientists at the Novartis Agribusiness Biotechnology Research, Inc. in North Carolina. When added to crops, the gene, which Novartis is patenting as Acuron, gives them the ability to resist a certain class of herbicides. The herbicides ''kill plants, either crops or weeds, by blocking a key metabolic process,'' said Marc Law, who runs the Acuron research project for Novartis, in a statement. With the added Acuron gene, ''the metabolic process is no longer blocked by the herbicide and the plant remains unaffected,'' the statement said. Novartis has filed patents to support the technology, and said it expects approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency by the time its ready to sell the product in 2003. The company said it plans to sell this new type of herbicide both alone and in combination with other Novartis weed- killing chemistry. Basel, Switzerland-based Novartis is stepping up the pace of its agricultural research in the face or increased competition from companies like Monsanto and AgrEvo. The company plans to spend $600 million over the next decade on a research center in California dedicated to agricultural biotechnology. Novartis said it will introduce the new system Friday at the Commodity Classic, a commodities industry convention held in Albuquerque, New Mexico. --Theresa Waldrop in the Dallas newsroom (214) 740-0873 /mfr