Situated neatly in between Cologne and Düsseldorf, the headquarters of Bayer CropScience look more like a university campus than the global hub of one of the world’s leading crop protection companies.
The sprawling site at Monheim is home to 60 hectares of grassland, several lakes, 10 technical and administrative buildings and a Tropicarium housing conference rooms, the staff restaurant and more than 600 tropical and sub-tropical plants. Directly adjacent are more than 250ha of arable land for open-field testing of new active substances. Construction of the site, which has 1,800 employees, took nine years, from 1979.
Bayer CropScience is just one division of the Bayer Group, which also comprises Bayer HealthCare, Bayer MaterialScience and three supporting service companies - a far cry from its foundation as a company manufacturing synthetic dyestuffs in 1863. Leverkusen, a 10-minute drive from Monheim, became the company’s headquarters in 1912 and today the town is still very much synonymous with the chemical giant, boasting a museum-style communications centre called the BayKomm, a giant illuminated tower bearing the company’s logo and the eponymous football club, Bayer Leverkusen.
Globally, Bayer CropScience employs 19,000 staff in more than 120 countries. Monheim is the main research site, developing insecticides, fungicides and seed treatments. Institutes on site include the Institute for Plant Diseases, the Institute for Insect Pests, the Institute for Metabolism and Environmental Fate, the Institute for Ecotoxicology and the Institute for Residue Analysis & Human Safety. A further site in Frankfurt develops herbicides, and there are six other research facilities across the world.
There are three facets to Bayer CropScience’s work: crop protection, meaning the development of insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and seed treatments; environmental science, meaning the development of products for professional use and consumer use; and bioscience, a fast-growing element involving vegetable seeds and seeds for agricultural crops such as cotton. Bayer has strengthened its position in the vegetable seed industry since its acquisition of Dutch firm Nunhems, a non-GM seed breeding specialist, as part of its purchase of Aventis CropScience in 2002.
In 2008, Bayer CropScience generated sales of €6.3 billion (£3.9bn). “Sales grew well last year because of favourable market conditions,” says Dr Bernhard Grimmig, a global development biochemist who joined Bayer 10 years ago. “We were a market leader in insecticides, second in the market in fungicides and third in herbicides. We were also market leaders in seed treatment and environmental science, making us the third-biggest agrochemical company [in terms of sales] in the world.”
Crop protection is clearly big business if you know what you’re doing. But why is there a need for it, and how long does it take for a new active ingredient to make it onto a farm’s crop protection programme?
Long time coming
Innovation in crop protection and agricultural practices is necessary to safeguard yields and meet the demands of a growing world population, explains Grimmig. Growth in areas such as Latin America, eastern Europe and Asia-Pacific is increasing pressure, and as the population grows, so does demand for housing and infrastructure.
“We have to find solutions to increase productivity, so expenditure on agricultural research will have to go up,” says Grimmig. “We are convinced that more money is needed for research and we need to improve the agricultural practices and knowledge of people in developing countries.”
Climate change has also rapidly brought about demand for products and techniques that can reduce yield fluctuations through stress-tolerant traits, such as increased resistance to drought and salt.
“Innovation is vital,” insists Grimmig. “Without crop protection, nearly half of the current food harvest would be lost and yields would drop by 50 per cent. Farmers always lose some yield because of episodic stress. But with innovation and adequate use of crop protection solutions, total yields could increase significantly. This is a very important point to make to people, especially in the western world, who don’t always see the need for crop protection.
“Exports are now very global, which means we have to think of global registration strategies to make trade possible - for example, if you take Chilean table grapes, we need our active ingredients to meet the requirements of production in Chile and also to meet residue tolerance levels in all of Chile’s export markets. We have to comply with the residue requirements of the supermarket chains.”
Supermarket residue tolerance requirements tend to be stricter than official regulations, especially in Germany, says Grimmig. “UK supermarkets are also strict, although not as prescriptive as the likes of Aldi,” he explains. “Resistance management means we need a mix of active ingredients and we need to persuade the supermarkets of that fact.”
With the spread of new epidemic diseases, the development of resistance from some pests and diseases to certain chemicals, and the necessity of growing healthy food of high quality, innovation has never been more crucial to crop protection development.
And the timeline of that development is a complex, non-linear process. The research phase can take four to five years, the development period three-and-a-half to four years, and then, once the dossier has been submitted for a new active ingredient, it can take between two and five years for it to be registered, depending on the country. “The whole process can take 10-15 years from the beginning of research to the first sale of a product, and can cost in the region of €240 million,” says Grimmig. “It is a long cycle and a long-term selection and optimisation process. So the EU’s proposed changes to the cut-off criteria on directive 91/414/EEC could affect years of work.”
Bayer CropScience employees have to whittle 400,000 component chemicals down to two to three active ingredients to produce a crop protection product, and Monheim houses an on-site chemical library with 2.5m compounds in its depository - soon to be increased to 4m. This library is not solely for the use of crop protection scientists - any scientist working across any Bayer company may source their chemicals from this facility.
“In the past, we have successfully developed products - maybe two to three new molecules every year, which is better than our competitors,” says Grimmig. “However, it is a case of how to translate that into value. Between 2000 and 2009 we brought 23 active ingredients to market. There is a powerful pipeline in place to maintain that momentum and drive further sales growth.”
So how do scientists know what active ingredients to develop? As Grimmig explains, Bayer CropScience interacts with growers in different countries and markets, examines the dominant pests and diseases and then develops a screening approach based on research and development guidelines.
Dr Stephen Humphreys, food industry manager at Bayer CropScience UK, explains: “Historically, we concentrated on major areas such as arable, and then used to scale our findings down to fruit and vegetable production. More recently, we have focused on fruit and vegetable production in its own right and are now actively developing solutions specifically for that market. This is a new development but a really good one in terms of finding targeted solutions for particular crops.”
Grimmig agrees. “We have tried to shift our organisation towards a crop view rather than a chemical view. Farmers are our customers and they want a solution.”
The development of a crop protection product requires numerous screening activities. High-throughput screening is conducted in the various greenhouses on site and other analyses carried out include bio-information, chem-information computer simulations and molecular modelling.
“Active ingredient innovation - developing herbicides, fungicides and insecticides - is the main part of our research, but we are also looking at newer research activities such as yield improvement and regulation of crop stress,” says Grimmig. “Some crop protection chemicals can also increase yield by 10-15 per cent, even in the absence of a pest or disease. Our research also supports life cycle management, which means we try to get more out of our existing products.”
After the research stage comes the development of the products. Active ingredients need to be formulated, as a compound cannot be applied to crops directly and must be made soluble in water. “It is important we add substances during formulation to increase uptake into the plants,” says Grimmig. “We then have to show the product’s activity profile and develop recommendations to farmers. We have to demonstrate our products are safe for humans and the environment. The product is applied, samples are collected and then residue analysis is performed. Toxicological research has to be started very early - we have to know before the development phase if the product contains toxins.
“Environmental safety is very important. We sell products for farmers to release into the environment so their fate and effect on the environment has to be characterised - a lot of research is done into soil and water, etc,” says Grimmig. “For example, is there soil accumulation or leaching? This is performed in studies at the Lysimeter Institute, which analyse the decomposition of all active ingredients. We have to demonstrate the decomposition pathway of a chemical and any metabolites that are created.”
Following the extensive work on human safety and environmental safety comes the regulatory affairs stage, where all the studies performed during the development of the product are pulled together and the risk assessments evaluated to ensure the new product will be safe from the perspective of the consumer, farm operator and bystander and, not least, the environment.
Developing appropriate guidelines for the seed treaters and farmers who use Bayer products is also a key component of development. A recent episode in Germany when the Bayer neonicotinoid Gaucho was incorrectly applied to maize seed, and there were a number of associated bee deaths, saw use of the substance suspended in Germany - although the Chemicals Regulation Directorate (CRD, formerly the Pesticides Safety Directorate, PSD) was happy to see all UK approvals continue. However, Grimmig stresses that it was “inappropriate treatment” that led to the disaster, as seed treaters failed to add the ‘sticker’ component of the German formulation and this, combined with the type of pneumatic drill being used resulted, in the incident. “We have since introduced engineering controls to ensure that such an accidental release doesn’t happen again,” he says.
To counteract this and similar challenges, Bayer CropScience recently established a product stewardship department, to identify problems that could arise from usage of the firm’s products and anticipate issues before they even happen.
“We need to know the active properties and their risk profiles, and how farmers are using our products,” says Grimmig. “We are looking into application practices, risk profile, training programmes and regional and global implementations. It’s a long-term endeavour requiring planning and security. Stewarding safe use is very important for sustainable solutions and businesses.”
Testing times
Over at Bayer CropScience’s Lysimeter Institute, the emphasis is firmly on examining the leaching behaviour of crop protection products. Enormously strict guidelines must be followed for new products to be authorised by the various registration authorities around the world - in the UK, the CRD (formerly the PSD).
“We have to identify all the degradation pathways with crop metabolism studies,” explains Dr Eduard Hellpointner. “If you don’t know how a substance degrades, you won’t be able to detect the residues.”
Studies are conducted on the parent molecule and also on some of the important metabolites involved. “All the crop metabolism studies are taken to the authorities for checking,” says Hellpointner. “We also have to examine the fate and behaviour of the product - soil leaching, uptake by animals, etc. Only with the complete data package can the country authorities derive the maximum residue limit (MRL) figures.”
But the challenge arises when each country’s set of MRL figures is different to the next. “It is hard to know if the authorities are coming from a scientific background or sometimes a political or social one when they set the MRLs,” says Hellpointner. “Different countries have different models with different consumption data, maybe based on different cultures - product usage may also vary from country to country, e.g. dose rates or harvest intervals, so although countries may receive the same data, they can derive different MRLs from it.
“If authorities want to find residues, they will - our data is to make sure that these residues are not a problem.”
Tests are also conducted into the leaching of chemicals into groundwater. European agriculture is very limited in the chemicals it can use because of the groundwater directive, explains Hellpointner, which was put into place 25 years ago - with, he stresses, no scientific background taken into account. “The cut-off was set at 0.1ug/litre of a crop protection product that is allowed to be found in the groundwater - or in other words, one part per billion. There is no risk assessment as to whether this level might have an impact or not.
“This is a major disadvantage for European growers,” he continues. “These restrictions are cutting off potential tools for farmers. We are also always under the pressure that these limits could be set for surface water as well, due to lobbying from the green parties and related NGOs in Europe, in which case about 90 per cent of substances could not be used on crops and spraying would be impossible.”
Safety first
At the Institute for Residue Analysis & Human Safety, safety is the primary goal - for animals, crop protection operators and, above all, consumers. “Our main goal is to be safe, safe and safe, and that is how we develop our products,” says residue analysis expert Ralf Schöning. “Our department is one of the last stages before registration of our compounds, before they are released to the market.
“We have to take a representative residue sample from the whole field or greenhouse, and that is immediately deep frozen after harvest to -20°C, to prevent the degradation of the compound.”
When the samples arrive, a deep freeze cutter breaks them down to fine powder, making a homogenous sample. “Two samples go into the lab and two samples go to storage to remain in our freezer for the next two years. We then burn the rest of the product,” says Schöning.
Some 40,000 samples are handled a year, half of which are analysed and half of which are stored.
The institute is also concerned with the safety of operators applying the crop protection products, so the clothes worn in the fields are homogenised and analysed, along with soil and water samples. The residue analysis labs contain 11 auto-samplers, representing an investment of €4m per machine, which run 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.
The results from this institute are then translated into MRLs, which are then sent to the authorities with a view to eventual registration. “It can take six to eight years to get all the information for one compound, and that can cost up to €200m,” says Schöning.
Global approach
Once an active substance has been researched, developed, formulated, thoroughly analysed and registered with the relevant country authorities, you might be forgiven for thinking Bayer CropScience’s work stops there. However, then the food chain management team takes over, with responsibility for supporting growers across the world via partnerships.
Dr Birgitt Walz-Tylla, head of food chain management, explains that the food chain partnership is a business model by which all partners can benefit. Around 40 projects are underway at the moment on various products, and the number of initiatives is increasing.
A large number of projects involve helping farmers gain certification for access to new markets - for example, benchmarking Mexican tomatoes to GlobalGAP certification in conjunction with Mexico Calidad Suprema. “Our colleagues in Mexico did a lot of work to support and educate farmers about following our recommendations on spraying and treatments,” explains Walz-Tylla. “We offer very tailored services, depending on the local conditions. Retailers and suppliers are coming closer together because of increasingly global trade. Suppliers are looking for sources and they need reliable partners - transparency and traceability are very important.”
Bayer CropScience’s food chain management work also extends to helping improve the quality of produce. A project called Flavour Guarantee in Brazil aims to increase the sugar content in grapes and melons, to help growers fetch a premium. “These business models are a win-win situation,” says Walz-Tylla. “They benefit the grower, who sometimes gets higher prices and new market access, they benefit the suppliers, who find reliable growing partners, and they benefit the retailers and Bayer CropScience. This is a sustainable partnership and a solid business programme.”
Bayer CropScience has a global network of food chain managers who regularly exchange their knowledge and expertise. “Having a global network is good - it means we can feed off each other,” says Walz-Tylla. “We are trying to develop the concept and meet the changing demands of the food industry. The word sustainable means long-term thinking, not just a trend. We try to incorporate this into our business and communications worldwide.”
Bayer has adapted well to this food chain approach, according to Humphreys. “Ten years ago we talked to the farmer and distributor - we were at length from the supply chain. Now we have realised that the supply chain is a big customer and we need to work with it more and more. Food chain is part of the language round here now,” he says.
With pesticides increasingly in the firing line from green political parties, NGOs, the organic movement, certain types of consumer and, more recently, the European Commission and the European Parliament in the guise of the review of directive 91/414/EEC, this collaborative, global approach seems to be exactly the one a company like Bayer CropScience should be building on for the future. Each crop protection product that makes it to market takes years of research and painstaking detail. Perhaps if more people were aware of the stringent controls and analyses involved, the crop protection industry would be in a better position to safeguard its future.
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