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Extract from Farm News
According to Joe Byrum, head of Syngenta’s soybean product development, a five-year overhauling how the company’s plant breeders approach new soybean genetics, led in 2014, a saving of $287 million in research development, and in a shorter time frame, than new genetics would have been put forth without the advanced analytics method…
Byrum said advanced analytics gives Syngenta a new way to compete and farmers can have confidence “that the transformation is robust, it will perform…. We’ve integrated the [OR and AA] technologies. This tool is about better analysis of the data, to make better decisions.”
For example, during Syngenta’s presentation, the cross-breeding possibilities within each soybean’s 46,000 genes, is 1.16×10 to the 12th power. That a number with 130 zeros behind it. Byrum said more powerful computers can sift through the data faster and present outcomes more efficiently, than simply planting more seed plots around the world.
Prior to OR and AA, creating a new soybean products through cross-pollination took six years, Byrum said. Now, Syngenta’s process is a fraction of the time, with substantial research savings. Syngenta couched its new processes as the effort to feed a fast-growing world population- 750 million every decade – without hurting the earth’s soils.
