BASF and Monsanto Company announced a long-term joint research and development and commercialization agreement in plant biotechnology that will focus on the development of high-yielding crops and crops that are more tolerant to adverse environmental conditions such as drought. The collaboration is effective immediately.

Monsanto will commercialize products that emerge from the joint development. The companies have agreed to share profits associated with commercialized products, with Monsanto receiving 60 percent of net profits and BASF receiving 40 percent. Monsanto decided to collaborate with BASF because the company is positioned to provide traits as a series of successive upgrades within a particular crop. For BASF, Monsanto’s track record of commercializing traits and breeding desirable germplasm ensures that BASF’s innovations will quickly reach the widest base of farmers.

In addition to the biotech development agreement, the companies also announced that they have entered into a separate development and commercialization collaboration to research methods to control the soybean cyst nematode, a parasitic worm that can limit and destroy yields for soybean farmers. Both collaborations will be performed by Monsanto and BASF Plant Science, the plant biotechnology company of BASF.

In Other No-Till News...

• John Franz has been named to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio. In 1970, he discovered that a chemical, later named glyphosate, could block the growth of vegetation. Glyphosate soon became the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide, now one of the world’s most effective and top-selling herbicides.
• A project to develop a non-GMO, herbicide-tolerant grain sorghum was…