AgroPages-Syngenta Seeds to expand Indiana seed offerings-Agricultural news

Syngenta Seeds has announced they intend to expand their seed offerings to Indiana farmers in 2014, because Indiana will produce over 1 BB of corn for the first time in history in 2014. Pat Steiner, the Corn Portfolio Head for Syngenta, says Indiana will be the focus of their expansion in seed offerings for coming growing season, “We are going to bring an explosion of new hybrids to Indiana. We have a tremendous increase in new hybrids and some very high quality hybrids.” He added that several of these new hybrids did very well in test plots in Indiana this year. In addition, the company has revamped their marketing plans for 2014 to stress their new offerings for Indiana and the Eastern Corn Belt.

Steiner told HAT that the new offerings are the result of newly acquired genetics, “About 5 years ago, we acquired 6 new sets of germ plasm. Our breeders have put that into some truly new hybrids that are performing very well.” He said this new portfolio of hybrids are especially well-suited to Indiana. Steiner says Syngenta will be offering a wide variety of hybrids with a variety of different traits and characteristics that will fit well into the Indiana landscape, “In 2014, we will launch three times as many new hybrids as we normally do.” He said growers will have great choices on hybrids that will work in a wide spectrum of soil types and growing conditions.

Syngenta is offering 102 Golden Harvest and NK branded corn hybrids for 2014, including 60 with brand new genetics. Corn rootworm control comes from the company’s Agrisure Duracade trait; 16 of which include Agrisure Viptera technology for control of multiple pests. Eight hybrids include Agrisure Artesian, which is Syngenta’s answer to growing corn in low precipitation environments. Results from 2012 show that Agrisure Artesian showed 17 percent better yields under severe and extreme drought over non-Artesian hybrids. The company is offering eight new hybrids containing the Agrisure Viptera E-Z Refuge “refuge-in-a-bag” trait.