USA
June 26, 2024
Growers are at the heart of our focus when it comes to seed innovation. We’re dedicated to helping them unlock value, meet market demands and stay ahead of pests, diseases, and unpredictable growing conditions. We are striving to deliver varieties with the potential to be high-yielding and great-tasting faster than ever before.
Because as you grow your business, the health of the world grows with you.
Working to Solve Grower Challenges Faster and More Sustainably
Our R&D station in Las Escobas, Baja California, Mexico, is an example of how we’re working to deliver new traits and varieties faster. Investment at Las Escobas has focused on enabling continuous plant growth throughout the year while managing water resources efficiently. The site is specialized to support the goal of breeding new tomato, pepper and cucumber products faster and in a more sustainable way.
We have implemented technology, prediction, and a different way of managing plants at Las Escobas so that we can decrease the time of breeding cycles — without losing focus on the traits that the market needs. It means that we can shorten the time from concept to commercialization considerably and respond to grower and market shifts faster. We achieve this by leveraging prescribed growth conditions and applying agronomy innovation in crop management to help accelerate plant growth and generate healthy seeds.
Speeding Up Seed Cycles
To develop and test new products quickly, our expert R&D team at Las Escobas prescribes crop management practices based on environmental conditions. Using these techniques, they were able to reduce cycle time (go from seed sowing to resowing the next generation) by more than 25%. By having shorter cycles, the team can reduce the lead time to develop new hybrids by up to one year while maintaining the focus on the demands of our customers.
Advancements in Environmental Science for Continuous Seed Cycles
We recently invested in adding cooling, heating and supplemental lighting to our greenhouses at Las Escobas. Supplemental lighting helps to boost flowering and improve seed quality. With cooling in summer and heating in winter, we’re creating an environment that allows the plants to continue their physiological growth, even in extreme temperatures.
Continuous Seed Cycles Allow Faster Responses to Market Shifts
As new product concepts are needed, such as resiliency to climate change, new customers’ preferred traits, resistance to new diseases, production in new geo-climatic areas, we work to rapidly develop products that help to overcome these challenges and meet growers’ and consumers’ demands. We use breeding technologies, continuous breeding cycles, novel testing strategies, and laboratory sciences to bring solutions that meet the demands of the market, growers and the planet.
Water Sustainability Is Key
Water availability is limited and water quality (due to salt content) is a concern at the Las Escobas site. To improve sustainability of water usage, we collect and recycle rain and mist water, and to improve water quality, water from our wells goes through treatments to ensure we use high quality water only for both our people and our plants.
By moving breeding cycles to greenhouses instead of open fields and creating shorter cycles, we can also reduce our operational water usage and pesticide use. In 2023, we reduced water use at the Las Escobas site by over 15 percent while increasing the number of plants at the site. This means that we were able to grow more using less water.
Healthy Begins With Your Success
Our consumer-oriented pipeline focuses on innovation that helps grow your business. The advanced breeding techniques and improvements in crop management that we’re using at Las Escobas are examples of how we’re working to deliver new traits and varieties faster and more sustainably. We invest in innovation like this so that you can grow a healthier business and more people can enjoy the delicious vegetables they want and need. This is where healthy begins.
Join us in yielding a healthy future for us all.
Bayer, Bayer Cross, De Ruiter & Greenhouse Leaf Design® and Seminis & Leaf Design® are registered trademarks of Bayer Group.
Topics
Species
