Racing toward superseeds

Amid rising demand for crops and limited farm acreage, where are tomorrow's food, livestock feed and clothing fibers going to come from? Scientists at a handful of large agrochemical companies are working on answers.In tightly secure, sensor-studded laboratories and greenhouses, they tinker with "climate genes," genetic traits that promise to produce larger harvests from plants better able to withstand drought, floods and rising ocean levels.One of these brain trusts is Syngenta's global biotech research center."This is the next wave of (seed) traits to hit the agrochemical market," said Roger Kemble, Syngenta's head of crop-genetics research. "We want to be extremely competitive, and I believe our research backs this up."But Syngenta, a Swiss company, is up against the mother of agricultural biotechnology.Nobody sells farmers more seeds than Monsanto, based in St. Louis. The company corralled 19 percent of the world's $23 billion seed market and 95 percent of the $6 billion market for genetically modified seeds, according to 2006 sales figures.And Monsanto is trying hard to maintain its dominance, said agrochemical analyst Mark Gulley of the Soleil Securities Group. Monsanto spends about $1 billion on seed-traits research and development a year, about half the industry's annual investment.To further bolster its prowess, Monsanto last year reached out to BASF, a German agrochemical giant. The companies' $1.5 billion collaboration is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.The market for biotech seeds is expected to grow as farmers, with limited acreage for crops, look to increase their yield per acre. That gives Syngenta, DuPont's Pioneer, Bayer CropScience and Dow Agrosciences a chance to claw a bigger piece of a very profitable pie.Gulley projected that, by 2015, sales of biotech seeds will more than double to about $15 billion -- with Monsanto retaining about a 65 percent share."We have the opportunity to bring different solutions to our growers' problems," Kemble said. "We will provide (them) ... with a choice."After more than 30 years of research, most crop seeds are available in biotech versions, such as soybeans resistant to herbicides and corn and tomatoes less susceptible to pests.Biotech seeds are more accepted in the United States than in Europe, where critics call the resulting crops "Frankenfoods," but analysts say the seed companies haven't captured as much of the potential market as they could in this country.For many U.S. farmers, the price of the seeds is a sticking point. But rising fuel costs and demand for food, especially in China and India, are expected to persuade more U.S. farmers to use biotech seeds, including those designed to better withstand extremes of weather.The climate genes target the parts of crops that are affected by poor weather and soil conditions. Drought-resistant corn, for example, is altered to grow longer roots that can better reach water sources or make more of a stress-reducing hormone.Syngenta's approach aims to protect corn plants from drought stress during pollen and ear development, Kemble said. Sufficient amounts of viable pollen are critical for the corn plant to form kernels on the ear.He declined to provide details of the company's research related to other crops. The information is just too sensitive, given the competitive nature of the research, he said.Syngenta plans to bring the first of the seeds with climate genes to market in 2011, about two years after Monsanto.(E-mail Sabine Vollmer at sabine.vollmer(at)newsobserver.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)