Innovation will be critical to meet the changing requirements of farmers and society in the future, says Andrew Orme, Managing Director of Bayer Crop Science in the UK and Ireland.

“The world is changing rapidly – we’re experiencing a fourth industrial revolution through the impact of technology in ways that we couldn’t even imagine probably just five years ago.

“For example, the use of big data is starting to help growers analyse more accurately weather patterns, cropping and soil to help make decisions about what to plant in fields and when. Farm equipment, for example, can potentially take and analyse soil samples in real time, push the results to a large database stored in the cloud, and then combined with weather predictions, use them to make precise adjustments to nitrogen applications.

“The potential is encouraging firms that have never previously been in agriculture to develop new technologies – firms like Bosch and Fujitsu, for example. And then there are new breeding technologies, such as gene editing, which have the potential to speed up conventional breeding to introduce novel new traits much more quickly than ever before.”

But at the same time we are living in an increasingly critical environment, where introducing new technology or innovations are becoming more difficult. 

“So there is a pressing need for further innovation that addresses evolving societal and farmers’ requirements in a sustainable manner and for those innovations to be introduced in a way that they are accepted by all.”

Bayer spends around £10 on research and development for every £100 spent on its products, an investment that is paying dividends as a new generation of products and services from Bayer begin to be commercialised.

That includes a new black-grass herbicide, which will be launched this autumn, and a new SDHI fungicide available in spring 2017. 

The herbicide, Hamlet, gives better black-grass control than Atlantis in wheat, says Phillippa Overson, herbicide campaign manager. “It is built around mesosulfuron and iodosulfuron, but also contains xg/ha of diflufenican. In trials, it has given significantly better black-grass control than Atlantis, plus control of a wider range of broadleaved weeds. The best timing to use Hamlet is in the autumn at the 1-3 leaf stage of black-grass.”  

Ascra Xpro is the first wheat fungicide to contain two SDHI active ingredients, says Nick Duncan, cereal fungicide campaign manager. “It contains bixafen and fluopyram, plus the industry standard azole prothioconazole. In our work so far, it has given a clear benefit in disease control over current market leading products, which has translated into a 0.3t/ha yield advantage.”

Both new products are approved for use, and will be available for the 2016/17 season.

Further down the line, future innovations from Bayer include a new nematicide for root crops, and Conviso Smart, a herbicide-tolerant system for weed control in sugar beet being developed in conjunction with KWS. 

“We’re also committed to introducing hybrid wheat varieties in the 2020s, while our digital farming products are currently being tested in countries across Europe,” Mr Orme says.

“It is an exciting time to be in agriculture, and Bayer is committed to help shape the future of farming in the UK and Ireland with its research and development of new innovations.”