Row Crops

Mendel has a long standing and very successful relationship with Monsanto Company, dating back more than a decade. A primary goal of this collaboration is to enhance the performance of major row crops including corn, soybean, cotton and canola, through improvement of intrinsic yield and stress tolerance. We have a number of products in commercial development with Monsanto across different crops for these very high value trait areas. In particular, Mendel transcription factors have shown promising results in broad acre yield trials in both corn and soybean. These include Monsanto's most advanced soybean yield enhancement technology which first advanced into Phase II development in 2006. Monsanto has continued to report (August 6, 2007 press release) that this technology performs well in field trials conducted in North and South America. The product entered Phase III advanced commercial development in January, 2009 (see January 9, 2009 press release) and remains on track for market launch, with commercial-track events exhibiting very significant yield gains across a large spectrum of locations.

In addition, a number of Mendel technologies are being applied towards stress tolerance products by Monsanto including applications such as improved cold germination and nutrient use efficiency in corn, and disease tolerance across a number of different crops. The most important stress-tolerance trait area under development is drought tolerance since low water availability is the primary limitation to worldwide crop productivity. Mendel has filed patents on a number of transcription factors that deliver improved performance under water limitation and Monsanto is evaluating these in key target crops such as corn and cotton in extensive field trials. One of our most advanced technologies is the NF-YB transcription factor which Monsanto has shown to boost grain yield in corn on dry-acres (Nelson et al., 2007, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 104: 16450-16455).