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Sustained Partnerships
Handshake Between Seed Company And Breeders Solidifies Success
BETTY VALLE GEGG-NAEGER
MidAmerica Farmer Grower
MEMPHIS, TENN.
Horizon Ag is a partnership company as well as a seed company. Its partnerships are the backbone of the company’s success in providing rice seed that helps farmers be productive while ensuring that customers throughout the world have the quality of rice they desire and find palatable.
Partnering with BASF, Horizon Ag has the benefit of that company’s technology. BASF has entrusted the Clearfield and Provisia technology to Horizon Ag’s hands with respect to multiplying and marketing seed for about 20 years. However, the partnerships don’t stop there.
“We’re dependent upon university breeders, as well as other breeders, but we primarily work with university breeders,” said Dr. Tim Walker, General Manager of Horizon Ag. “They have a tremendous breeding capacity. We want to facilitate and support their efforts, not compete with them.”
He cited Dr. Steve Linscombe, who retired from the Louisiana State University Rice Research Center after 35 years of service, as very instrumental in breeding rice marketed by Horizon Ag for a number of years.
“Dr. Adam Famoso is now leading that program and doing a great job at LSU with our Clearfield and Provisia varieties,” he explained. “Dr. Xueyan Sha, who mentored under Dr. Linscombe a number of years and has been at the University of Arkansas since 2013, and Dr. Karen Moldenhauer, who has been at the University of Arkansas for about 30 years, have both contributed to varieties that make up important parts of the Horizon Ag portfolio. For example, CLL16, a new variety launch for us in 2021, has been in her program and we’re very excited about its potential.
“We also have a variety out of Mississippi State University that has really filled the niche with respect to Central America and some of our domestic food companies. It has a higher amylose content, very similar to what you would see in South America; and if anybody knows the competitive landscape that we see in rice, they know that South America is very competitive and a lot of that is due to that high-amylose rice. So, we’re just very fortunate to have a tremendous amount of partnerships, both BASF and university breeders, as well as our seed producers and, ultimately, the retail channel.”
Horizon Ag was a participant and cosponsor of the recent 23rd annual National Conservation Systems Cotton & Rice Conference, held in Memphis, Tennessee.
“I’ve participated in this event for many years, from a scientific standpoint when I was an agronomist at Mississippi State, and for the last several years as I’ve been leading Horizon Ag,” Dr. Walker said. “It’s a great meeting, one of my favorites because of the format where scientists, farmers and industry representatives interact and present information over a broad landscape of topics with respect to agronomic production.”
During this year’s conference, Arkansas farmer Wes McNulty presented his experiences with Provisia rice and Horizon Ag variety PVL01.
“Wes has farmed Provisia rice for the past two years near Pine Bluff, Arkansas,” Dr. Walker explained. “He has had phenomenal performance, both from a weed control standpoint as well as yields, so we were glad to hear Wes’ comments and support of the technology. Rice farmers have needed Provisia rice, and now that it is available, there are benefits for farmers to have both Provisia and Clearfield rice technologies in a rotation where they are able to take advantage of different modes of action. There are some areas where the Clearfield technology is clearly not as effective as it once was, and Provisia is certainly going to help us with that. There also are areas where farmers that have rotated well and used good stewardship, and the Clearfield technology is still working. We’re highly encouraging those farmers not to wait until a problem is actually there before they begin rotating these technologies, so they have the use of them both for a much longer time.”
In support of both Clearfield and Provisia rice, Horizon Ag continues to bring new varieties to the marketplace.
“We’re excited about releasing PVL02, the second long grain Provisia variety, which will be available to farmers on a somewhat limited basis in 2020,” said Dr. Walker. “Those retailers that came alongside the Provisia technology in 2018 and 2019 received a fair share allocation based on how much PVL02 we would have in our portfolio this year.
“Then, with respect to our Clearfield portfolio, we’re launching one new Clearfield long grain called CLL15 and one Clearfield medium grain called CLM04. Both of those varieties were developed at the University of Arkansas. CLL15 and CLM04 are available until they sell out. So it’s first come, first served. There is a lot of excitement about both, especially the long grain variety, based on how well it has performed in trials the last few years.
“CLL15 is raising the bar on yield for Clearfield varieties. CL151 has probably been one of the highest-yielding pure-line varieties we’ve grown in the South over a long period of time. CLL15 has that same type of yield potential, maybe even a little bit higher yield potential, but it also has the blast resistance genes that CL151 doesn’t have, so it is going to be much more stable in those environments that were prone to blast issues, like South Louisiana and certain parts of Arkansas. If nothing else, just the fact that you don’t have to spray for blast at the end of the season goes a long way to improving farmer profitability. CLL15 has a good milling quality package, good disease package and good lodging resistance – a lot of improvements relative to the CL151, without giving up that top-end yield potential.
“Then for 2021, we’re going to be adding two more Clearfield varieties to our portfolio,” said Dr. Walker. “Over the next couple of years, we’ll probably have a totally different offering from the standpoint of Clearfield, new varieties that are very much farmer-friendly, that have raised the bar on yields but also with the quality in demand by our very important export customers, like Mexico and Central America.”
For 2021 releases, Horizon Ag is working with seed producers so that enough seed should be generated that the need for allocations is eliminated.
“Clearly no one variety is going to make up 100 percent of our portfolio in the near future, so we don’t foresee any allocation,” he said. “I think it is good judgment for any seed company to release new seed incrementally; there are always things we’re not seeing in a developmental stage, so we’ll never release an amount more than an industry-standard launch. We want to give people an opportunity to experiment with them. My rule of thumb as an agronomist is never go more than 20-25 percent of a new variety on your farm, so we take that same mentality in our seed production portfolio.
“Our disease packages on all of our varieties are continuing to improve – PVL02 is an improvement over PVL01,” he continued. “Then, looking further down the road, when we launch PVL03, we will have a strong blast resistance package. We hope to launch that variety in 2022.”
There’s a lot of optimism at Horizon Ag that acres will return to a normal level this year after fields were inundated with so much rain last year. There was a considerable amount of prevented plantings the past year, as a record number of acres were left fallow in Arkansas and some of the other states.
Dr. Walker’s take-home message to farmers in the field is twofold.
“One is, if you are continuing to fight weedy rice, we’re the only one that has a chemical solution, Provisia rice and Provisia herbicide, to address that problem now. The second thing is for farmers who are just starting to see weedy rice or hard-to-control grasses, again, we have the only chemical solution for that – and why wait? Let’s go ahead and address some of those problems early on so that we extend the life of both Clearfield and Provisia technologies in those situations.
“We have a lot of optimism, there’s just a good feeling here compared to where we were a year ago. We wish farmers and the industry nothing but the best in 2020,” Dr. Walker summed. ∆
BETTY VALLE GEGG-NAEGER: Senior Staff Writer, MidAmerica Farmer Grower
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