Monsanto, Novozymes BioAg Alliance Field Trial Shows Promise

The BioAg Alliance, Novozymes’ and Monsanto’s collaboration to improve soil health and harvest through naturally-occurring microorganisms, announced its first full year field trial results. Of the top 10 microbial strains tested in corn and soybeans, average yield increases were 4 bushels per acre for corn and 2 bushels per acre for soy. The results are positive given the strong backdrop of overall record crop yields in 2014.

The partners are leveraging Monsanto’s global network to increase the reach of existing commercial products – from Optimize inoculant for soybeans in the United States to Torque inoculant for corn in Ukraine – and new product candidates are currently in development. Novozymes and Monsanto conducted over 170,000 trials across hundreds of microbial strains in 2014 and plan to expand trials in 2015. The partners also continue to collaborate with and evaluate third party microbial technologies in addition to those under development by the companies.

The results were announced as part of Monsanto’s annual pipeline update. For more information, go to www.monsanto.com/pipeline.

Read more about the trails here.