Shorter corn stalks, drones and more: Inside Bayer Crop Science’s $2B R&D pipeline

By Nathan Rubbelke - St. Louis Inno editor

Two subjects are top of mind for Bayer Crop Science President Rodrigo Santos.

″We do believe that more than ever, not only because of the pandemic but also because of the war in Ukraine, there are two things that really become even more important than any other topic: food security and climate change,″ Santos said. "Those two topics are probably on the agenda of every conversation that we have.″

Bayer Crop Science, which has its North American headquarters in Creve Coeur, has put those two topics at the center of its research and development initiatives, developing new products that it believes will help mitigate food insecurity and climate change.

″The way that we see it is that agriculture can really solve these two issues,″ Santos said. ″We can be part of the solution.″

Bayer Crop Science is a division of Germany-based pharmaceutical and agriculture giant Bayer AG, which bought St. Louis-based agtech company Monsanto in 2018. Bayer Crop Science says it's annually spending more than 2 billion euros (or roughly $2 billion) on its R&D efforts. It recently gave St. Louis Inno an overview of its R&D projects, showcasing innovations at its Agronomy Center in Jerseyville, Illinois, and research and development campus in Chesterfield.

Its R&D pipeline includes an array of products, ranging from new crops, pesticides and herbicides to digital products focused on optimizing farmer yield. Here are a few highlights:

A shorter corn stalk

Height isn’t everything.

That’s the approach Bayer Crop Science is taking with its new short-stature corn hybrids, which are corn crops that will feature shorter stalks than traditional corn hybrids. Bayer contends short-stature corn hybrids will be less susceptible to wind damage from storms and help farmers be more precise in their use of crop protection products, helping to improve yield.

Bayer says the stalks of short-stature corn will be less than 7 feet tall, compared with 9-12 feet for a traditional corn hybrid. While shorter, the crops are expected to have the same number of leaves and corn ear size.

Bayer Crop Science's short-stature corn hybrids (left) are grown next to traditional corn hybrids at Bayer's Agronomy Center in Jerseyville, Illinois.    Nathan Rubbelke

Frank Terhorst, head of strategy and sustainability for Bayer Crop Science, said the company’s new short-stature corn is a ″basically a new crop.″

″It’s still corn, but it’s a new agronomic system,″ he said.

Bayer said it will have ″hundreds of on-farm pilot plots″ of the crop in North America in 2023. .

Another new crop being commercialized by Bayer is CoverCress, a rotational, oilseed cover crop to provide winter and spring soil cover between corn harvest and soybean planting. The crop produces low-carbon-intensity oil that’s slated to be used to produce fuels and animal feed, giving farmers the opportunity to monetize the cover crop. Bayer earlier this month said it acquired a majority stake in CoverCress, the eponymous agtech firm based in Creve Coeur that developed the new crop.

″It’s generating value and profit for farmers and then, on top of it, moves into a space — biodiesel and sustainable (fuels) — that is addressing one of the key challenges of society,″ Terhorst said.

A full commercial launch of the CoverCress crop is planned for this year.

Digital roots

As it develops new crops and products to protect them, Bayer Crop Science is also turning to digital technology to help farmers optimize performance.

In recent years, it has placed a focus on providing software that helps farmers use data and analytics to improve operations on their farms. It’s an area of growth that Santos said he believes will be critical to the success of the industry in the years to come.

″What is happening with the farmers on the digital transformation, I think that will be a breakthrough in terms of yield, in terms of sustainability as well, and also in terms of connecting the farmers to society a little bit further,″ he said.

Bayer in 2015 launched Climate FieldView, a platform that collects data for farmers and provides visualization and insights reports to help farmers monitor operations. It says the software is used on more than 200 million acres of farmland in 23 countries. In November 2021, Bayer announced a partnership with Microsoft aimed at expanding its roster of digital and data services for farmers.

On Monday, Bayer Crop Science said it is launching a new digital platform, called ForGround, that uses its FieldView software and is designed to help farmers with sustainable agriculture.

Another technology that Bayer has focused on is drones.

″We’re doing a lot of work with this technology around the world,″ said Jennifer Ralston, global soybean seeds and traits portfolio manager.

For example, Ralston said drones can use mapping technology to stop and spray only where weeds are pervasive. With a price tag around $30,000, drones are cheaper to access than a traditional agriculture sprayer, she said. Bayer has been working with drones mostly in smallholder farms in Asia and Africa, Ralston said, but the company is working to expand their use to larger farms.

″We’re working more on bigger drones that can travel farther and carry more volume,″ she said. ″We’re also working on swam technology to where you could have swarms of drones that could come in and cover fields much faster."