Farmers are to be given a new opportunity to make sugar beet cultivation easier, more flexible in its timing and more environmentally friendly. This is the objective of Bayer CropScience and KWS SAAT AG, which have signed an agreement to jointly develop and commercialize an innovative system of weed control in sugar beet for the global market. The technology is based on the breeding of sugar beet varieties that are tolerant to broad-spectrum herbicides in the ALS inhibitor class. The system is scheduled to be available to farmers in some years.
Joint research on developing the system began in 2001. The new sugar beet plants have a naturally occurring change in an enzyme involved in the biosynthesis of essential amino acids. During development, sugar beets with this spontaneously changed enzyme were specifically selected and used for further breeding.