Monsanto and wheat breeding

Farm and Ranch March 18, 2010 It was last July that Monsanto purchased the small grains breeding company WestBred. In an interview at the recent Commodity Classic, U.S. sales manager for WestBred Jeff Koscelny, talked about Monsanto’s acquisition.

Koscelny: “For the last couple of years we have seen a lot of interest from the wheat industry getting back into technology into wheat. It just so happened that the WestBred business came up for sale so it was a great opportunity for us to purchase the assets of a germplasm company to deploy our great technologies we are deploying in other crops into wheat. So, the opportunity presented itself. We were very interested in getting back into wheat. Everything came together and we are now back in the germplasm business and working on new technologies for wheat.”

Koscelny says WestBred can build on Monsanto’s previous work in corn and wheat.

Koscelny: “So many things in our corn platform we will be looking at in wheat. The monocot system. We fill like there is a lot of applicability between corn and wheat. And you don’t have to reinvent the wheel for wheat because we have already developed that wheel for corn. It is just making it applicable to wheat. That led us to the conclusion that it was a wise investment even tough it is many years out before we will get a return on that investment.”

While biotech wheat may still be years away other new technologies will speed up the traditional breeding process.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.

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