R&D spend on crop protection to shift to developing world

RESEARCH and development spend on crop protection issues affecting European markets will come under pressure as the potential for growth in agrochemicals market shifts to Asia and Latin America.

'Local’ weed, pest and disease problems, such as black-grass, will not be sufficiently significant in a global context to attract funding for new product development from crop protection manufacturers, James Barkhouse, MD of agrochemical and seeds business, Syngenta, told the conference.

"Europe is currently the big player in the crop protection sector of Syngenta’s market. However, that will not be the case in the next few years as there are significant growth areas for us globally. They are primarily eastern

Europe, Asia and Latin America and that is where you will see us start to place our spend,” he said.

"Syngenta spends about $1 billion a year on R&D. Black-grass is not big enough to get a big piece of this dollar. Most of our research dollar is going into stuff that needs fixing in the developing world.”