Meeting the need: researchers in and around Research Triangle Park are discovering how to efficiently feed the world's growing population.

• Author: Bivins, D. Lawrence
• Position: SPONSORED SECTION

Last summer, the Midwest faced its worst drought in decades. Conditions slowed commerce as barges sailed with partial loads to keep from running aground in the dwindling Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Much of the region's corn crop was devastated--but not all of it. New agricultural technologies developed in North Carolina helped keep yields higher compared with past droughts.

At Syngenta International AG's network of growing chambers in Research Triangle Park, scientists have engineered plants that put farmers in control of an uncontrollable aspect of their business--rainfall. "We're increasing the efficiency of the corn plant to utilize water," says Dirk Benson, head of project management at Basel, Switzerland-based Syngenta, which has about 1,000 total employees ill Greensboro and RTP. The corn hybrids germinate from knowledge the company's scientists glean through painstaking trait testing, which identifies and encourages desired characteristics of plants.

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Solving problems is what companies such as Syngenta do, and they are working on a big one: How do you keep feeding a global population that the U.S. Census Bureau estimates will grow by nearly 30% to 9 billion by 2046? The answer lies in getting more yield and nutrition from each plant while growing them in less productive environments, such as places where droughts are routine rather than rare. But head count is only half the story. Demand for grain to feed livestock is growing as burgeoning middle-class populations in Asia and South America cultivate a taste for U.S.-style diets, which are loaded with animal protein. "Once you've tasted beef you don't want to go back to rice and beans," Benson says.

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RTP is an international hub for innovation. "Modern agriculture is an area rich with growth potential," says Peter Eckes, president of BASF Plant Science, a unit of Germany-based BASF Corp., which employs 350 of its 1,000 North Carolina workers in RTP. There, researchers develop yield-boosting corn hybrids and pest- and weed-control solutions. Accomplishing that takes intense experimentation but also a firm understanding of how plants survive and flourish. Trait testing done at Bayer CropScience, which moved its headquarters from Lyons, France, to RTP two years ago, like that under way at BASF and Syngenta, involves collecting and organizing huge volumes of data. Life-science experts home in on promising new seeds...