The Quest to Improve Yields
By Phyllis Jacobs Griekspoor, The Wichita Eagle, Kan.
Dec. 13–How many bushels of corn is it possible to grow on an acre of Kansas farmland?
Considerably more than farmers routinely grow today, says seed giant Monsanto, which spends $2 million a day on research — much of it dedicated to improving the yield potential and drought resistance of corn.
Most Wichitans are familiar with Monsanto, the world’s leading biotechnology company.
But what many people might not know is that Monsanto has a research hub in Wichita. Twelve employees — four of them research scientists — work in the laboratory as well as in farm fields at various locations in central and western Kansas.
It is exactly the kind of business that organizers of today’s Bio/Nxt Conference at the Wichita Airport Hilton hope to see more of in Wichita and south-central Kansas.
More than 150 participants are registered for the conference, which began Wednesday night and concludes today with a presentation by Janet Harrah, director of the Center for Economic Development and Business Research at Wichita State University. She will present an economic impact study of agriculture in the south-central Kansas economy.
The conference is designed to make area businesses more aware of opportunities in the bioscience industry and help them earn a share of the more than $580 million in development funds generated by the Kansas Economic Growth Act.
Jim Mock, president of the Agribusiness Council of Wichita and a co-sponsor of the conference, said companies engaged in biofuels, bioindustrial materials and products to enhance human and animal health have significant opportunities to thrive in south-central Kansas.
“We already have a base that is solid,” Mock said. “We have ICM at Colwich, the Cargill Meat Solutions headquarters and other Cargill businesses and food processors such as Farmland and Dold Foods.”
Mock said he hopes to see the area build on other existing strengths as well.
“I’d like to see the WSU research folks looking at issues like making composites out of soybean oil and maybe medical applications for products,” he said.
Drought resistant corn
At Monsanto’s Central Plains Crop Technology facility on North Meridian, station manager Wayne Tallman said Wichita provides an ideal location from which scientists can fan out in several directions to do field work — focusing primarily on drought resistant corn.
Monsanto has owned the facility, which it bought from DeKalb, since 1992. It converted it from a wheat breeding station to a biotechnology research station in 2001.
“We try to replicate and validate the studies we have done in the lab when we go out to the field and bring back data to analyze and forward to the home office,” Tallman said.
In addition to field trials now in their fifth year in Kansas, Monsanto also has trials under way in Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, South Dakota and California. All of them have significant emphasis on drought resistance and yield traits.
The company has a goal of bringing drought resistant corn varieties to the commercial market sometime after 2010.
Mark Lawson, yield and stress lead researcher at Monsanto’s home office in St. Louis, said Monsanto’s first target for drought resistant corn are the areas where drought stress is a frequent yield reducer, including Kansas.
“Those areas see significant yield reductions from drought stress, especially when it comes later in the growing season,” he said. “Our goal is to improve yields by 10 percent relative to existing hybrids in those areas.”
At 493.2 million bushels, corn harvest in Kansas in 2007 was nearly a record, due in part to more acres being planted. With prices nearing $4 a bushel, the total value of the Kansas corn crop was close to $2 billion.
Demand for corn is expected to keep prices high as more ethanol plants now under construction come on line.
Tallman said Monsanto’s mission is to help farmers become more efficient and productive through a combination of traditional breeding programs, agronomic traits and biotechnology traits including insect and herbicide resistance.
“We’re trying to find ways to produce as much corn as we can to meet all the needs around the world for animal feed, human food and industrial uses,” he said.
“At this point, we don’t know the final number of how high corn can go. We’ve seen yield contest winners as high as 350 bushels to the acre already, and we’re improving as quickly as we can.”
The difference between those contest winners and the 100 bushels a Kansas farmer may feel lucky to harvest in a year of drought stress comes largely from how effectively the corn plant can use the water available to it.
“If we increase the ability of the plant to use what water it does get, then we increase the yield on drought-stressed acres,” Tallman said.
Reach P.J. Griekspoor at 316-268-6660 or at pgriekspoor@wichitaeagle.com.
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