It enables both parties to improve their respective wheat breeding programmes, provides innovation to wheat growers and ensures resources for advanced education in the field of wheat breeding. Financial details were not disclosed.
With this agreement, Bayer gains access to a selection of spring wheat germplasm of SDSU, increasing the available genetic resources to improve wheat varieties.
The University is a provider of spring wheat varieties in South Dakota and varieties from SDSU are also grown on significant acreage in North Dakota and Minnesota, US.
Hartmut van Lengerich, head of cereals and fungicide at Bayer CropScience, said: “This public-private agreement with SDSU is part of our strategy to establish relationships with the leading global institutions working on the improvement of wheat. Our efforts are focused on the most urgent problems facing wheat growers today and in the future. We are working on the development of wheat varieties with higher yield, more efficient nutrient utilisation and tolerance against abiotic stress such as drought or heat.”
Source: Bayer CropScience
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