Corteva Unveils Wheat Breakthrough as Seed Race Heats Up

(Bloomberg) — The race to boost wheat yields with drought-resistant varieties is heating up.

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Seed company Corteva Inc. is unveiling what it calls a “revolutionary” development in wheat: a non-genetically modified seed that could boost yields of the amber grain by 10% while using the same amount of land and resources, the company said. It aims to beat out rivals by getting its hybrid wheat into the North American market as early as 2027.

Corteva’s development, which it plans to tout during its investor day in New York on Tuesday, comes after Argentina’s Bioceres Crop Solutions gained US approval for its genetically modified wheat. Dubbed HB4, the variety tolerates drought as well as certain herbicides, though its commercialization in the US remains years away. A Bioceres representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Indianapolis-based Corteva is seeking to do for wheat — a bread-making staple for growing populations around the world — what its Pioneer unit and other seed companies did about a century ago for hybrid corn, which refers to cross breeding of the grain. Demand for such corn exploded during the severe drought conditions of the 1930s, and yields for the crop have far outpaced those for wheat.

“Pioneer introduced hybrid corn in the 1920s, and since then our technology has helped achieve more than 600% increases in average yields,” said Sam Eathington, Corteva chief technology and digital officer. “We’re now similarly poised to bring the revolutionary benefits and yield potential of hybridization to yet another core crop.”

Increasing wheat yields would be a boon for a grain that ranks third among US field crops — behind corn and soybeans — in acreage, production and gross farm receipts, according to the US Department of Agriculture. The country’s wheat plantings peaked in 1981 at 88.2 million acres, compared with an estimated 46.1 million this year, while production has fallen by about 800 million bushels over the same period.

The decline in acreage has coincided with increased competition in global wheat markets, hurting farmers’ returns from planting wheat in the US versus other crops. That’s caused some growers to cut back wheat acreage and turn to corn and soy.

Corteva’s new wheat technology isn’t genetically modified, which may give it an edge over the GMO wheat from Bioceres. Direct consumption of genetically modified crops by humans has long stoked fierce opposition from consumer and environmental groups. No GMO wheat is commercially grown in the US.

Research trials show that Corteva’s non-GMO hybrid seed can yield about 20% more than so-called elite wheat varieties in water-stressed environments, according to the company. Corteva said that while it’s starting in the US, the technology is applicable for all global wheat markets.

Wheat’s complicated genome has posed barriers to cost-effectively leveraging hybrid technology, limiting the ability to deliver serious yield improvements, according to Corteva. But the mapping of the wheat genome by third parties in 2018, along with Corteva’s discovery of innovation in hybrid wheat seed production, opened up possibilities for a breakthrough, the company said.

Corteva said its initial focus will be to apply its hybrid technology to hard red winter wheat, which is used for making bread flour and is the most widely grown variety of the grain in the US.

(Updates with Bioceres’ response in the third paragraph; background on US wheat in the sixth and seventh paragraphs.)