Nutritionally enhanced corn off research menu

Friday, March 15, 2013

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

Unfavourable market conditions have led BASF Plant Sciences to halt research into the development of a nutritionally enhanced corn.  The research, dating back to 2005, was conducted in the U.S. At the same time, BASF has announced that it is expanding research into fungal resistant corn.

Fran Castle Rowland, global brand communications senior manager, BASF Plant Science, said in an email that nutritionally enhanced corn would have been a product “only grown and distributed by farmers and elevators when they are enticed by significant premiums. This has been a continuous development and has reached a point where we need to recognize that we will not be successful in achieving the value uplift now required by the industry.” She added it is unlikely they will resume the research. Fungal resistant corn research, she said,  “is in its very early stages.”

BASF said in a news release that research into fungal resistant corn would be conducted at BASF Plant Science’s global headquarters in North Carolina. “Field testing sites will be located in North Carolina and in the Midwest region of the U.S.” BF