February 12, 2007

 

Dupont sees key GMO role in ethanol corn challenge

 

 

New strains of GM corn would play a crucial role in meeting soaring demand as US thirst for ethanol fuel cuts into supplies.

 

Bill Niebur, DuPont's vice president for genetics research and development, said demand for ethanol means the race is on to rapidly ramp up grain yields.

 

The company doubled average yields in North America in 41 years. The challenge, according to him is to move that curve faster.

 

The rapidly increasing number of corn-hungry US ethanol plants has raised concerns there would not be enough grain to go around.

 

Industry insiders expect farmers to plant significant new corn acreage in the US this year, but many warn that new land is limited, making yield increases more urgent.

 

Niebur said Dupont's seed division Pioneer was now spending between 9 percent and 11 percent of revenues on research. The time frame for getting new seeds to market had halved, with 87 percent of the hybrid corn seeds the firm now sells developed in the last four years. Development cycles need to compress more, he said.

 

DuPont's new research was focused on boosting yields by making plants more weather, bug and weed-resistant, as well as creating corn types more suitable to ethanol production.

 

Average US corn yields in the US were close to 150 bushels per acre, with yields breaking through the 150-bushel mark only once, in 2004.

 

The company hopes to break the 400-bushel-yield level in corn and the 100-bushel-level in beans.

 

He admitted those yields would not become widespread in the near future and predicted a 1-2-percent increase in productivity every year.

 

Peter Nessler, vice president of the renewable fuels group at FCStone, said yields increased in spurts, high productivity one year usually being followed by several flat years.

 

In 2006, 61 percent of corn planted in the US was genetically modified, compared to 52 percent in 2005 and 46 in 2004, according to the USDA statistics.

 

Niebur expects the uptake to continue until reaching as much as 95 percent of corn planted.