Johnston and Ankeny, Iowa, USA
April 23, 2020
Corteva Agriscience, (NYSE: CTVA), and PowerPollen®, an Iowa-based ag tech company that developed the first and only scalable pollination technology for commodity crops, today announced a commercial agreement expanding the use of pollination-on-demand technology, enabling increased flexibility and productivity for Corteva’s commercial corn seed production.
As part of the agreement, Corteva will license the on-demand pollination technology and gain access to PowerPollen’s prescriptive pollination expertise and algorithms that inform producers of the optimal pollination timing to increase seed yield, purity and quality.
“Over several decades, scientific advancements have improved agricultural productivity, but the challenges associated with pollination have remained largely unsolved. Based on in-field testing, we believe PowerPollen’s technology will further enable us to produce high-quality seed for our farmers and improve the productivity, profitability and sustainability of modern farming practices” said Neal Gutterson, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Corteva Agriscience.
PowerPollen will be responsible for collecting, preserving and applying pollen leveraging its patented technology, which uses custom designed tools and preservation methods built to scale for commercial operations.
“Preserving and applying pollen at the optimal time to enable the production of a hybrid provides flexibility and efficiencies never before achieved in production agriculture. Corteva is the ideal collaborator to help us accelerate our commercialization strategy,” said Dr. Todd Krone, co-founder and CEO of PowerPollen. “Since launching PowerPollen five years ago, we’ve refined our preservation technology to extend the window of pollination from a few hours to more than six months.”
The ability to preserve pollen enables product innovation across a wider variety of hybrids, increasing genetic diversity and in-season decision making.
The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
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