Starting this winter, the world’s biggest chemical company is ready to ship its first biotech breakthrough to farmers. And while that breakthrough - a potato called Amflora - may seem minor compared to Roundup Ready or Bt corn and soybeans, the fact that it’s so different shows what the company can bring to the reach of global biotechnology.

 

BASF is a late comer to biotechnology. In fact, Jurgen Logemann told the ABIC 2007 conference in Calgary on Wednesday the company didn’t set up its own plant science group until 1998, more than 15 years after Monsanto.

 

Now, BASF is catching up, said Logemann, vice president of global technology management at BASF Plant Science, which 700 employees in eight research units in five countries.

 

For farmers, the news is that BASF brings a unique focus, Logemann said. “Our eye is always on yield. It’s what farmers want, and they want it for a reason. Yield drives profitability.”

 

The company is working on yield traits in corn, soybeans, wheat, rice and other crops. It puts 400,000 gene combinations a year through intensive chemical and plant screening. At one site in Belgium, for instance, it grows 100,000 unique rice plants, testing every plant once a week from planting through harvest.

 

“Yield isn’t one gene,” Logemann said. Instead, BASF is focused on pathways in the plant that may involve a dozen or more genes, some of which have to be turned up and others turned down in order to optimize yield.

 

To make faster progress, BASF has created partnerships around the world, Logemann added. That includes a new multi-year agreement with Monsanto, where the two companies are combining their abilities to screen new gene combinations in corn and soybeans, and then sharing the development of the genes that are produced.

 

BASF’s first introduction is expected to be Amflora, a potato that produces only amylopectin starch. Normal potatoes have two kinds of starch, amylose and amylopectin. The amylose, however, turns into a gel when it’s processed, so potato starch is almost impossible to use in many food and industrial applications.

 

Amflora potatoes, with their pure amylopectin starch, are expected to clear their final European regulatory hurdles this fall, so they can be grown under contract by European farmers and processed for papers, adhesives, textiles and cosmetics.

 

Soon to follow will be other crops with insect and disease resistance, Logemann said. However, the company is continuing to develop new chemical crop protection products too. “It doesn’t matter to us whether we solve the problem chemically or with genetics,” he said. “BASF just wants to be the company with the solution.”