Welcome back to the War Against Weeds Podcast. I'm Joe Ikley, extension weed specialist at North Dakota State University. My co host today is Alyssa Essman with the Ohio State. Alyssa, how are things going in Ohio?
Good. We've got a nice, sunny, dry day that we've had for many days now. How are things in North Dakota?
We've got a chance of up to a 10th of inch of rain tonight. So that will be the most since about mid August. So time to get some moisture going again. Well, that's not why we're here. So we've got a couple of guests on today, and today's topic, we're going to talk about herbicide development. And so we pulled a couple of different folks in from different industry companies. We're going to go ahead and introduce them, let them talk about what they do
within each company. So I think first we will start with Cara McCauley, welcome, Cara.
Awesome, Thank you, Joe, glad to be here and a member of the war against weeds army that that you and Alyssa are taking up. So my name is Cara McCauley, and I am a herbicide biologist here at corteva agriscience, and I'm based at our global headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana, and so my work over the last six or six years or so at corteva has really been focused in herbicide discovery, which is a necessary
part before we are able to develop those into products. So excited to talk with you all today.
All right. Thank you. Looking forward to it. And the next we'll go down to Jason Adams, Jason, same rundown that Cara just gave.
Perfect. Yeah. Thanks Joe and Alyssa for having me on. I got to start off by saying, Go Bison NDSU graduate here. So happy to be with you guys. So my current role is a research and development group leader at our Vero Beach Research Center down here in Florida, and I work for the weed control team. And so my team and I, we work on different development trials, very applied research as part of the development cycle for new herbicides as they are being worked on, for Syngenta crop protection.
All right, awesome. So you know, one of the key reasons I wanted to get both of you guys, besides knowing you and calling in favors to friends, is that Cara is kind of on that front end and Jason is more on the back end. So I thought it'd be good perspectives with a couple of different companies. And so kind of gets us into our next
question. I think we'll, we'll start with Cara on this one, since she's on the early side of it, but within your company, what are the different stages of what to say, discovery and development? What does that process generally look like?
Sure, yeah, I can take a first stab, and then Jason, you'll definitely have to help me out on the back end, you know? So we really view our stages of herbicide development starting with discovery, right? So we have discovery, kind of a pre development stage that may happen after that, before we truly go into, you know, the herbicide development, really
trying to make a product out of it. Then we kind of transition to a launch phase, and then, you know, following that, we're still supporting that molecule, and then some type of an extension or an improvement of the original use of that, you know, so very, very short overview, right, of what could
take, you know, anywhere from 10, 12,15, years, right? Even that, that extended, improved piece that could be another, you know, 15-20, plus years, right, with, with some of our molecules, or even longer, and so, you know, within each of those stages, right, there are, you know, there's a lot of cross
talk, right with the weed scientists. You know that we're chatting with here today, but also a lot, a pretty big team, a collaborative effort across a lot of different, lot of different groups here at corteva,
Similar, different at Syngenta. Jason?
Yeah no, it's very, very similar. You know, we've got for us. We break it down into four stages. And so our first stage is like Cara was talking about, it's really our Discovery Center. Discovery stage. That's when we're looking at different molecules, kind of narrowing them down, profiling them, stuff like that. And then we go into stage two and three, which is our development stages, and then our fourth stage is
commercial launch and support from there. So, yeah, very, very similar to the process that Cara described.
So for this initial kind of discovery phase, where are you sourcing these molecules from?
You know, what? If you can dream it, we've probably sourced a molecule from it, right? Alyssa, it's a good question, right? There's a lot of, a lot of pieces that we're looking for, right, in terms of what could be our next, you know, herbicide, herbicide mode of action, or even a starting point to a new herbicide mode of action. You know, we do source chemistry from chemical suppliers, right? There's commercially available libraries, certainly, that we
can purchase molecules through. And. Screen them, and our plate based or greenhouse based screening, and then, you know, those are typically good starting points, potentially. And then we would then discover and develop and create, you know, a product from that, right? We wouldn't necessarily be taking a molecule that we purchased and taking that through the pipeline, if only that, that was a possibility, right? But it's, that's where, you know, the bread and butter
of the the scientific you know, investigation happens. We also can, you know, novel synthesis of chemistry here on site, right? We, I have, you know, about 60 discovery chemists that sit, you know, two hallways away from me, white, right? If I find, you know, if I'm reading a paper or I have a specific hypothesis that I say, hey, there's some molecules that I think are interesting. Here are some different, you know, modifications that we could consider making. I look to see
if we could purchase them, and we can't. Could we make them, right? And that's like, one of the really cool parts of my job is getting a chemist excited to make a compound that that I think has a biological target, and having them make that, and then we can spray it on plants as soon as they make it, and see, see if there's any biological effect.
So can you just sit around, say, I wonder what 2,4-D with a longer side chain looks like. And you're Go, go make this and we'll spray it.
The easy answer is, yes. The realistic answer is, you know, you really have to convince someone, right? I mean, it's a resource game, right? Just like everyone else is, is part of right? We have more ideas, I think, than than we can execute. So, you know, if I can provide some, you know, preliminary information to support them spending the time, and, you know, buying the intermediates that they need to do and things like that. Those types of things can happen.
Usually, we're a little bit more creative than just modifications of 2,4-D over here. But, um, a great idea, Joe.
I like to keep things simple. And yep, listen, I get the romanticized version of, if we can dream it, we can do it, but yeah, we don't have that bottom line to ultimately answer to.
one, one thing that I'll add just a cool I mean, it's a, it's a whole serendipitous circumstance that happened at Syngenta, where there was a particular tree that they noticed, hey, there's no weeds underneath it. And so from that, they were able to isolate mesotrione as an HPPD, and we're able to isolate that and then be able to synthesize it, and now
it's in the marketplace. So in addition to chemical libraries and stuff, I've always heard lots of stories of how chemicals come from observations or different things in the field. So like Cara said it, these molecules really can come from anywhere.
So knowing that you know, what are some of the considerations when starting down the pathway of discovering development. So, you know, key weeds, you look into control as a company, key crops. You know, does it start as a very large scale, looking at some important weeds, important crops, or is it just a general what does this have activity on? Maybe we'll start with Jason on this one. Work backwards.
Well, that's a, it's a, it's a tricky question, so I think it's one of those chicken or egg type discussions, from my understanding and Cara can fill us in being more on the discovery side. I think a lot of those chemistries that are synthesized and just kind of developed, it kind of is alright. What are we controlling and what, what fit does this have and stuff, and then on this and Syngenta, at least, all I
can say is that we start to then look at where does this fit. And so some of our key, key weeds are going to vary by wheat, by region and by country and stuff. And so, for example, in the US, then some of our major crops that we're looking at and key areas are going to be the non selective market we're looking at that we've had some success there cereals. But then obviously the big two are the soybean market, and then the grand Mac, daddy of them all, the corn market. And so we start
to find things that fit in those markets. Then we start to say, All right, this might be something particularly like you mentioned, if it's hitting some of those key driver weeds. I think it's no secret that throughout the US, one of the key driver weeds is our amaranth species, you know, Palmer and waterhemp, especially with all the resistance issues that are out there, that's going to be a key driver. But then you've got other ones, barnyard grass, foxtails go into the cereals or
the non selective market. You're going to add kochia,rye grass, stuff like that horseweed for non selective market. So, you know, to me, it seems like it's a chicken versus an egg, you know. And we just kind of take what we get and then start to narrow it down and see which, which market it starts to fall into,
yeah. And I can just, you know, add the corteva perspective, which is again, really similar to what Jason addressed, right? And you know, especially from the from the discovery standpoint, we're trying to envision what the needs are 10 to 15 years from now. So we're, we have to understand the current unmet needs, right, which all of what
Jason included, right? If you know the amaranthus key grasses, you know things like that are important, but, but what might be we be facing, you know, 2040, you know, when molecules that I'm just now beginning to characterize might be on the market? So that's a crystal ball piece, right? That that no one knows the answer, but I think, you know, really trying to, you know, address what we have now, and using that as a starting
point, and then, you know, always, constantly evolving. You know, what species we're testing, what our targets are, you know, we may have, you know, a new area of chemistry that has a lot of, you know, promise activity on certain species that may not be drivers right now that, you know, we keep, keep those in mind as things, you know, weed shifts are occurring and things like that, you know. But also we can build a molecule to expand its spectrum or start to, you know, address certain
needs that we have. So it really is a constantly evolving effort, right? We have product concepts here at corteva, which are, you know, very well outlined by Jason, right, probably really similar weeds that we're going after. You know, we are a global company, right? So there's the US focus, which is, you know, more comfortable for me to understand, right? I haven't had the chance to travel over to the EU and see how terrible black grass is in wheat production there, you know. But that's a
huge driver for them, you know. So we're, you know, we're bringing in, you know, relevant bio types and lines, you know, that farmers over, you know, across the ocean are facing so it's a, it's a moving target, and it certainly keeps us busy.
I always like to ask questions like that, because it's, it's always interesting conversations that we'll have up here where, you know, why, why can't we just get a new spring wheat herbicide? And it's a little oversimplified when I when I'm having these conversations, but it's like, yes, spring wheat is our world, but it's kind of a smaller
portion of a global profile for a global company. So always kind of those tough but interesting conversations to have when a question that seems simple enough comes up, but almost extension meetings,
we have that question a lot too. Joe,
it probably comes from us and maybe Kirk Howatt another NDSU weed scientist,
key contributors.
But yeah, the other piece I wanted to follow up there that you know, something that I guess I haven't thought of too often, is pretty interesting, the fact that you're also trying to project when this product would actually make it to market, what will be the issues. And I know that a lot of our older, closer to retirement extension colleagues used to do this on an annual basis of like, Yeah, let's what, what do we think is 10-15, years from now, looking like it was
fun a couple years ago? They're like, Yeah, we didn't really see waterhemp coming. But let's not openly admit that too, too frequently. So it just just shows you can get a whole bunch of people that work on this in the same room, and can can sometimes miss the mark and what we think will happen, because things just evolve that quickly.
Yeah, and you know, that's that's something that you know, like you said, it's just the reality, right? And when we are executing our lab and greenhouse based experiments, right, we're trying to cast a very broad net right. When we're starting out like, no kidding, What? What? 2030, weeds. Does this chemistry maybe have activity on? How can we then use that information to focus, or, you know, maybe delay, or, you know, push that to the side for now, focus on
something else, right? It's always a lot of pieces moving together, because, yeah, you just never know what, what next year or the year after might bring.
So, kind of given all that you know what, what does make a herbicide a good candidate in that early discovery phase, just, I'll leave that open.
I can take a stab at that, right? So first off, you have to control the weeds, right? I'm a huge, I'm a huge Tom Hanks fan, love, love the solely movie, right? Don't forget to fly the airplane, right? And I think that's something, you know, that I've been learning, you know, coming in, coming into industry, right? You know, when I was coming up through grad school, I was like, I mean, yeah, you have to do is control the weeds. Guys like, come on, like that. That's the
easy part. And we definitely can't forget to do that, right? So to answer your question, right? A good candidate has. To control the weeds in the field consistently across normal and, you know, atypical environmental conditions, right? That's that's not always the hardest thing to do, right? Yes, we can sometimes do that, right? But then there's, you know, a whole list of other things to address, right, crop selectivity, right? I mean, unless you're going into a burn down situation, which you
know is possible, right? But a lot of times you have a crop growing, or will be growing there soon, right? Making sure you're not having, you know, in any safety issues, you know, crop crop damage on that, you know. And then an entire list of other things to consider, right, that I don't think I truly understood before getting to the into this position, you know, being safe to the environment. You know, all the environmental testing and toxicology, regulatory, you know, we new
modes of action are really exciting, right? But we want to make sure that no other organism has that that target site as well, other than our target weeds. You know, if we're lucky, you know, it has to be able to be formulated in a somewhat easy to use, you know, formulation. You know, early stage discovery, we can get a get away with, you know, asking our field scientists to spend a lot of time and be pretty particular
and how they're formulating it for our field trials. But, you know, we can't ask for a 10 step process or special water or, you know, things like that, you know, to our farmers, right? And so I think that's the balance, you know, in early stage discovery, we really are just trying to to figure out where it breaks, so that we can kind of try to prevent that from happening in later stages.
Yeah. And one, one thing I'd add the same, same thing on our side is we look for efficacy, we look for crop safety and all that, all. We'll start to look at environmental stuff. But in preparation for this not being as connected to that really early stage, one thing that I found interesting, that on the on our side, that I found very interesting was how early they start to look at business cases and cost of
goods. Because we could have a rock solid product that chills, kills weeds like nothing else, but if it's going to be $100 per acre product, that's really hard to to say. Are we going to be able to sell that now, obviously we're not going to have it all nailed down in that early stage and stuff, but we can start getting some ideas both, both, all of the companies really have, have been through this process a number of times, so they look for key hurdles or key key issues that might come up.
So that's one thing that surprised me in talking with some of my early stage colleagues preparing for this podcast, was to find out that really how early on they start to look at things like cost of goods and business cases.
Yes, that kind of goes into what was gonna be my obvious follow up was, what makes a product fail at this stage, besides, it doesn't control weeds. But yeah, costs, if you can figure it out that early, that definitely is an important consideration.
One other question I have kind of at this stage is, I know, in talking with Pat Tranel, you know, metabolic herbicide resistance is going to influence a lot of things moving forward. So how much is that taken into consideration when, you know, screening some of these products?
So I guess I can speak from, you know, early stage discovery, right? You know, when we're first looking at chemistry, where we have no information about it, right? We're typically not, not screening on on those super hard to control metabolic resistant weeds, right? We're just saying, Does this compound have any biological activity on plants?
And then it kind of funnels through our screening cascade, and as we start to build more excitement about its you know, potential, you know, to become a product, that's really where we start to introduce some of these problematic, you know, troublesome biotypes that they're out in the field. And we do do some of that screening in the greenhouse, certainly. But I'm a big proponent that, you know, you really got to, have to take things out to the field, right? Greenhouse. I mean, I
work in the greenhouse, right? So it's super valid, you know, you have to do that work, right? But controlling, even controlling resistant weeds in the greenhouse, first a real, real world field scenario. It's a big jump for new chemistry that's not optimally formulated, right? We don't necessarily know what it everything about the physical properties of the molecule, the uptake, you know, all of those things. So, you
know, we really have to address those things. And then also consider, you know, what are the weeds that this chemistry is going to try to control in the field, right? Knowing that you know increased metabolism or some differential metabolism by these weeds can really up end a lot of what we think we understood about some of this, this brand new chemistry, right? Because there is evidence of that, right, where these
biotypes that have increased metabolic. Machinery that can chew up existing herbicides, can also chew up herbicides they've never seen before, just because they recognize it as something that normally, you know isn't, isn't inside the plant. And so it's definitely something that we're focused on from a synthetic chemistry perspective as well. Right? How can we
design molecules to try to block some of that metabolism. So, you know, we are cued into a lot of the work ongoing at universities and things like that, as they're determining which genes and which pathways are involved in some of this Metabolic resistance. And we're using that information to try to build molecules that would be at least resistant to what we know now, right? Knowing that, you know, things evolve, but you know, trying to, trying to hit that moving target for sure.
Yeah, and our side, it's, it's a key, key factor. I like how Cara said earlier on that, you know, we've got to have that crystal ball. And resistance is a continuously evolving thing that we've we've got to keep our finger on the pulse. And so similarly, we have early stage we have entire groups that are just dedicated towards looking at resistance
issues and stuff. But I'll tell you on the on the development side, the applied research out in the field side, we start looking at it pretty early on, if we've kind of identified that, hey, this might be a molecule that might have a potential fit to target resistant problems, whether
that's in the amaranthus or whatever species it might be. So even on the on the field development side, we we start to hit it pretty early on to just see how that that product and those the different molecules that we're testing with might have a fit in that market. Yeah,
and I can just say, you know, I have, I'm on a project right now. I won't, won't spill the beans too much, but new, it's a new mode of action, right, that we've discovered here, and we're poised to go to the field for the first time next summer. So this compound, this area of chemistry, if you will, has only been characterized in the
greenhouse to date. So my first time going out to the field, you know, summer, spring, summer 2025, we have trials on susceptible biotypes, and we have trials on the tough to control metabolic resistant amaranthus. So the first time a new molecule is being sprayed in the field, right? We want to, we want to have a balanced approach, right? Because I'm really what's, what's the hypothesis, you know, What's the
objective of going to the field for the first time? One, you're trying to figure out, hey, is what I'm seeing in the greenhouse, what I'm seeing in the field, right from a formulation and an activity translation perspective. But no, K Am I controlling these weeds that nothing else is controlling. So year one, we're trying to tackle that.
And that leads into what I had as my next question of, what you know, do you have a good candidate? What are the next steps along the way of, probably past Discovery now, with developing this, this product, and sounds like Cara started that, and so maybe we can just continue down that pathway, or maybe Jason can.
yeah, no, I think, I think once we have done some of that early stage work, and we've kind of taken taken a product in an area of chemistry where we might look at several different molecules, we kind of get it narrowed down to one lead candidate. We might reserve some as backups and stuff. But once we get it narrowed down to that one believe candidate molecule, then a lot of what we're we're going to be working on is
basically targeting to build a complete and robust label. You think about the labeling requirements and everything that we got to have to launch that a product to market. The labels contain all that information. So we got to start looking at rates. We got to start looking at timing of application. We got to start looking at Broad weed spectrum, as well as our targeted weed spectrum. We've got to try to capture different soil types, different environmental conditions,
different varieties or hybrids of crops. We've got to start working formulations, Cara's, mentioned early on, you know, the formulation we, we kind of start working at an early stage, but we don't really, you know, tweak it and finalize it till that development stage. So that's, that's a lot of work is, is a lot of formulation work that goes on. Adjuvants are going to be a key factor, tank, mix partners, product concepts, weed control programs. So, I mean, the list just goes on and
on. But the way I like to simplify it is, at the end of the day, we said, Okay, this is a candidate we want to move forward with. Assuming we're successful, we've got to write a complete and robust label to help give all the instructions that are necessary to have that product successful in the marketplace. And so those are the sorts of questions that we start to just click off and. Target with our different field trials throughout the years.
So what's that timeline kind of look like for greenhouse portion of screening this molecule? Some that early stage field probably all internal at this point, and at some point you get to ship it out to folks like me to play with once in a while.
I guess. Yeah, I can take a take a start to that one. So, I mean, I think sometimes it's easy to think, Okay, we have a molecule, right? So you're going to test it in the greenhouse for a couple years, then you're going to go to the field, and then internal trials, right? And then cooperative trials, unfortunately, usually there are
some, some u turns along the way, right? You know, as you know, we may have a couple years of greenhouse data to support a field, a field candidate, right, which is a huge jump for me as a discovery biologist, right? Getting to take a molecule out to the fields at a pretty big deal, and not something that that you just run a couple things in the greenhouse and you get that type of support. And so I think you go to the field the
first time, fingers crossed, right? That it translates based on what you're you're expecting to see, but most of the time it doesn't right. Could it have been a formulation issue we've been talking about that some right? You know, is there an unexpected result that then you have to kind of de functionalize what you observed, to try to tease apart the pieces to figure out what was the contributing factor to, you know, a lack of
translation situation, right? Could it have been that, you know, the field scientists formulated it and then it ended up raining, and so it sat in the water for 24 hours, which was unexpected, and they went ahead and sprayed it, because usually that's fine. But then we later found out that the physical properties of the molecule were such that 50% of it was degraded because of the water hardness at that field site, right? I mean, there's so many little pieces that you really have to control
you can control right? But also know that that there's some variables that you know things don't look as expected, that you have to kind of come back to the drawing board and then redo those trials again the next year, right? Or, you know, go to a, you know, the southern hemisphere or something to drag, get a trial. And, you know, the US winter, right? Take, you know, ship, ship, some sample, down to Brazil or something
again. Then the the wheat spectrum is different there. So, you know, what is the objective that you're trying to achieve there, right? Just, hey, does it work in the field, or, Hey, does it work on the bio types of the species that we have down in in South America, versus what our target was in North America? And so a lot of a lot of those complexities, right? Can really extend the number of times you go to the field, quote, for the first time, before you're able to finally replicate, replicate
those, you know, and we mentioned, right? You just, you have one, one lead, right? Jason mentioned, you kind of, you know, one analog, maybe some backups, but it might be that you have a lead. And then, you know, after going into the field for two or three years, you realize that that's doesn't have a path forward for one reason or another. So now you're going back to your backups, or your backup backups, or something
like that. And I think that's really what can extend the timeline due to the field season and the testing nature of the new herbicides.
That sounds to me like corteva has a lot of the same fun situation that I and that's exactly right. You know, the way I answer that question, Joe is, what's the general
timeline of greenhouse to field to internal external? It's a messy web of back and forth and all around, and it's just kind of a gradient, because I know from from my perspective and what I see, we might be getting some compounds down here in Vero Beach, that it's the first time it's seen outside of the lab at our Discovery Center, which is located in jets Hill in England, might be the very first time it's seen Outside of that, that setting, but then it goes back to gelato, back to the lab, back
to greenhouses and stuff. Then it goes to the field here in the US. But then so just all over the place and and there's no straight line path for development and what it what it looks like, because we we encounter all sorts of crazy twists and turns along the way, like Cara is describing. So I thought she described it very, very well.
Kind of reminds me of that the it's been a meme now, but that picture from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where Charlie's there with all the pictures on the wall and red string going to all the different pictures.
right, yeah. Sometimes I feel like a herbicide biologist. Sometimes I feel like a detective trying to investigate a situation, and you have to do like interviews with all the relevant parties to try to figure out what may have been involved there, right? And kind of Yeah, making a web of you. Of brainstorming, right, to try to figure out what, what could have gone wrong, right? Which you know Joe, Joe, Alyssa, both of
you, you know Jason as well, right? We all kind of grew up, right, conducting, you know, field research as weed scientists. And even with labeled herbicides that we've had around forever, you get unexpected results, you know, and you're not sure, was it differences in humidity or rainfall or you name it, right? And it's kind of those same issues, or what we're facing as we're trying to develop new
herbicides. Yet we have this underlying lack of information about historical performance of what we like really can measure back to so it's kind of tough to kind of just keep yourself in aligned and you know, moving forward, that's
impossible to account for every scenario. But that's good, because I think it's important for for all of us, whether we're the four of us here, anyone listening, we always hear the number of x, number of hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a new product. And this is just a
piece of that. We're not going to touch all the environmental and toxicology stuff, but just seeing some of this back and forth that may happen early on for a candidate that gets there, you can start quickly racking up some dollars in your head if you figure out how much that might cost.
Yeah, I was reading an article, I think came out in February from from crop life, and it said, it's, we're now, you know, north of 300 million for a new AI in minimum 12 years from identifying the active first synthesis to launch. I think that would still be a pretty rapid timeline, you know, just in terms of all the things that that you may have to all the obstacles you may have to overcome right along the way, like I had, I had a project last year where, you know, the like I
mentioned, physical properties, right? Not something I'm super, you know, well versed in, wasn't part of my education, but the physical properties of these compounds were such that they weren't able to be read in some of our regulatory studies. They just weren't conducive to the way that study was was set up, you know. So we almost missed a field season because, you know, we couldn't go out to the field without this critical information, and so we're just racking our brains like this has
never happened before, right? How do you how do you navigate this new problem we have, you know, amazing teams of folks. I'm sure Jason has a lot of colleagues that he he reaches out to, right? We don't have to be the experts on these, but it's just things I never really thought might hinder herbicide discovery and development are things that I have to face almost on a daily basis here.
Yeah, and like Cara mentioned earlier, one of the tricky parts is a lot of times we don't know what we don't know and stuff. And so we might see some unexpected results in the field, and we come back and you know, some of us might might want to know something about about that product. I'm going to go back to my days at NDSU and Kirk Howatt always asking me about pKa. It's one of his favorite topics. It's like a requisite to get out of there is. It really, really is. But,
you know. And sometimes we we know that, especially the later that a project goes on, we're going to have some of those answers. But really early on, maybe that first look in the field, we're going to have that unexpected result, versus we're going to say, Well, what about this or that? We may not have that piece of information yet, which then makes it really tricky to then say, Okay, well, how do we, how do we solve that problem? How do we, how do we address it and stuff? So I think
it's, it's key. And Cara mentioned that there's, you know, we both play a very small role in the overall development and process of getting a herbicide to market, where there's whole other teams involved in stuff, and so it's interesting for us where, I mean, we're on the phone with different people all the time, whether it be England or Switzerland, where our global headquarters are, or just wherever, we're on the phone constantly with random groups of
people trying to get answers to questions, to try and drive things forward.
So what happens? I'm thinking now you got this awesome candidate, it's cleared every hurdle. Then you send it to us university folks, and now that now the net is wider, and just say, you send it up to North Dakota, and we get some weird crop injury or something completely unexpected, but you still want to move forward with that product. Is there a standard operating procedure here? What are the next steps in that?
Joe that would never happen? You would never mess up anything, right?
No, not every soil in North Dakota is unique or anything.
No, no, it's not well, I'll start here, because what I'll say is that here at the Vero Beach Research Center, this is kind of our bread and butter. That's a lot of what we do within my team is because of the facilities that we have, because we're in Florida, moving down here from North Dakota. I can tell you, the weather is much nicer in January down to
here. And I can have corn growing in the field, or I can have wheat, or I can have soybeans or whatever growing in our fields down here, or our greenhouse facilities, or our growth chamber facilities. And so we have a lot of those situations where something unexpected comes up during the field season from testing, whether it be internal questions or coming from our external cooperators, these questions
come up. And so what we'll do is we come down, and we'll work with our technical managers who are stewarding these projects as they're being developed, and they'll come up with questions. And so in a lot of cases, we kind of tack it, tackle it very academically down here at the Vero Beach Research Center, and say, Okay, well, how can we figure this out? And so we might start looking at the situation that Joe encountered there in
North Dakota. We'll start looking that particular situation, and we'll start breaking it down and say, Okay, was it wetter than normal? Was it drier than normal? Did we have hotter than normal conditions, or colder or whatever? And because of some of the facilities that we have here, we can start to break that down and run individual, kind of sequential experiments to start to say, Hey, is it the cold, wet
that causes more problems? Is it different soil types? I know we've had, we've had situations out of North Dakota, and so we've had, we've had soil shipped from North Dakota, from those fields down here, and we put them in pots. We put them in the greenhouse in December, January, and we run a trial to try to identify what may have happened there. And then one of the key things is to not just figure it out, and it's one thing, and that's great. Okay, we identified that it's XYZ
conditions that cause the problems. But then we go back to our discovery teams, or our formulation teams, or whoever it might be, and we take those learnings to then circle back, like Cara was describing earlier, we take that, and we might have to take a little about face and all right, what do we need to change? Whether it's formulation or it's a use pattern or label language or whatever? And then we take those
learnings, and then we just continue to move forward. But I think the key is to circle back to all those entities that are involved to learn from each other and work together to drive a solution forward.
Yeah, I would just say the corteva perspective is the same, right? I mean, again, I'm not working with any industry cooperators yet. Maybe, you know, maybe my projects might make it up to North Dakota, over in Ohio. Alyssa, you know, would love that. But, you know, it's the same thing. When I'm encountering field trials, right? Try to replicate what you saw in the field using, you know, growth chambers. You know, we've, we've shipped soil from the Northern Plains as
well. I don't know what you guys are doing up there, no, um, but, but, yes. I mean, usually, you know, you know, like I said, trying to tease apart what, what component of that trial was, was giving, you know, atypical, atypical results, right? One thing I've also encountered, right, is, is different nozzles, right? You know, you you identify, you know, a couple
nozzles that are working really well, right? And then you put that in your protocol, and, you know, most of the time it happens, but sometimes, oh, I forgot to change my nozzles out. You know, that could have been something that contributed to some differences. You know, all the things that we've learned right through our Weed Science upbringing, you know, all of those pieces are still in play, you know, as we're trying to discover new herbicides.
Yeah, so bonus question here, I didn't quite prep before, so we'll see how this goes.
I'm scared.
Now we get to the launch year the product, and now it's in a lot more people's hands. What would be the general case of then, if you have a couple areas pop up of issues and not thinking widespread issues, but like, certain things happen, and there's feedback on once we got it out there, because we did all sorts of weird tank mixes, all sorts of different environments, nozzles, all that happens is that that a different set of people than you guys. I didn't prep you for it.
So there's your easy out there.
so for for my perspective, Joe, what I'd say is the process really doesn't change from this in Syngnta side. It might change a little bit on the field side, but certainly we we encounter those situations. One of the famous quotes that kind of circles throughout our organization is
things never look as good as they do in test plots. And so you got people like the four of us on this recording right now that we take every effort to spray with the right nozzles and right pressures and right boom height, and every single thing we're controlling, all those factors to make a really quality application as it moves out to the field commercially, maybe
it's a little bit different. Sometimes it's up and so there again, here at Vero Beach, we do a lot of a lot of commercial support programs and trials to try and answer some of those questions. It might go I like that. Cara mentioned application technology, nozzles and and spray patterns and stuff like
that. We have a group that might get involved on that side, but a lot of it for for at least this in Syngenta, follows a lot of the same kind of processes to continue to work and make sure that our products are being used effectively or and that we continue to answer questions about them.
Yeah? I would, yeah. I don't have a much, much more to add for core tablet, right? I haven't really, you know, dealt with anything going to launch, but echoing everything Jason said, right? I mean, you just, you encounter a situation, you figure out what the issue is, you assemble a
team to tackle it, right? And I think when you're at a launch scenario, right, the elevation of the issues, you know, are probably going to be a little bit different than when you just have a couple of field, internal field trials that don't look look as expected, but all the same, all the same science backing up the decisions that we're making, and, you know,
educating others, right? I think there's also a big piece of on behalf of the companies, that it's our responsibility to educate people how to use use the new technology to get the result that everyone's expecting.
And lot of times in those post launch things, that's when folks like Alyssa and I get to get involved sometimes, of walking to the field and what the heck happened here? Yep. Alyssa did you have a question earlier?
So we touched on this a little bit earlier, talking about spring wheat. But in general, one of the questions I think Joe and I both probably get a lot is, you know, when's the next big, new, exciting product? And of course, I'm not asking you to give away company or trade secrets here, but I'm just curious, are there any molecules or any specific projects you're excited about?
I'll let Cara go first.
Okay? Challenge accepted. You know, yeah, Alyssa, it's a fair question, right? And you know, we get it all the time. And I'm sure, you know, everyone listening to this podcast has probably at least asked or been asked that question before. You know, I can say we do have, you know, some really exciting new herbicide modes of action in our pipeline for corteva that are controlling, you know, the
driver weeds that we talked about. You know, it just is a matter of, you know, navigating, you know, the necessary hurdles to make sure that we can get a labeled product out of it and into the hands of farmers. You know, there have been molecules in our pipeline that get de phased right when you know, problems come up that that there is not a way, necessarily, to navigate it towards a solution that that results to a new mode of action or a new technology in the farmer's hands. So we're on
it. I hear you, you know, every day I'm commuting to work thinking, all right, you know, how can I, you know, how can I, you know, help this war against weeds, right? With a new herbicide technology, mode of action, you know, formulation, all those different things. So, so we're doing our best, but certainly, certainly, it's a moving target that that we're after.
Yeah, and on the Syngenta side, it, it's the same, you know, we we have the same questions, the same concerns. It'd be really awesome to bring out a new mode of action. We all, we all are searching for that and trying to make it work. It's tough. There's a lot of hurdles to get there. And saying this car, I won't, you know, give away too much, but on the Syngenta side, we have a we have a number of very exciting new products that we are working on and that are
so far progressing quite nicely. It's up, but you never know what tomorrow is going to bring. But right now, in the herbicide space for Syngenta, I'm very, very excited about what the future might hold.
And there's always surprises. I remember an older think he's retired now, so I can I. Talking generalities, but a different company had a product that was almost there, but then in I think it was like an eye drop test on a on an animal in the lab. Some, some of the toxicology stuff didn't go well. And it's like, well, if you know, once you get into the toxicology side of things, if something goes bad, that might kill a product, right there? So,
yeah, and that's something where you know, is it a mode of action issue, right? That the mode of action that we're targeting is something that is relevant in humans, right? That's definitely something that we work to avoid, right? Or is it a molecule issue, right? Is it just something about that, that active ingredient specifically that caused that issue, and that you just need a different molecule that might not have that same, you know, unexpected,
you know, regulatory results. So I think those are the the two ways to kind of think about that. Yep,
we've had that happen here too. That happened early in my time down, down here at Vera beach, we were working on a project, and then we got the email that something, something somewhere else had failed and cease and desist. Over overnight, you know, went to bed, think it all was well and really excited the next morning, cease and desist. So it, it can happen and it and it can come from anywhere. So you just, you never know what tomorrow's going to bring in this herbicide development
game. I've got one more bonus question I thought of along the way.
Hey, we talked about this, Joe. The surprises is where I get in trouble.
I like to live on the edge. And this, this one actually may vary by company, and you may not know the answer. Again. Bonus question that pops in my Pea brain as we're talking at what phase in this do you discover the mode of action or site of action? You know, is it before you even sprayed in the greenhouse, or is it? It kills some weeds. Now, let's kind of delve into this.
So I would you know in terms of the stage of herbicide development, typically in the discovery stage is when we're determining what the mode of action is, in terms of your kind of second, your second, second. Bonus question, you know, sometimes we are spraying active ingredients or molecules in the greenhouse where we don't know what the mode of action is, we may we, I guess, always have a hypothesis, you know, around
what that molecule might be. And it could be that the molecules, you know, true hypothesis is that it may have a target from an insecticide or fungicide or pneumatic side perspective. But we'll go ahead and throw it into our, you know, herbicide screens, because you never know, right? And so I think early on, and you know, if it's a truly novel hypothesis, right? Or if it's not one that was herbicide in nature, we may not know what the mode of action is for a couple iterations of our
greenhouse testing. And I think it's a resource game there as well, right? Is it worth figuring some what the mode of action is of a molecule, if we really don't care too much about it, right? You kind of have to, you know, the chicken or the egg, you know, as Jason mentioned earlier, right? Sometimes you have to prove that this molecule is interesting enough to warrant the resource to determine what the mode of
action is, right? And sometimes, sometimes, the the methodology there is, first, you prove that it's not something known, right, those are pretty easy assays that we can run to eliminate known modes of action, and then you're in this, you know, phase of well, it's just not something that we know, right? That's a lot lower bar to investigate before going to the Okay, what
is the site of action? What is the mode of action? And even if you find the site of action, you might not know the way the plant dies, because that site or that mode of action is inhibited in some way. So you know, this is where you start to think, Oh, these are multiple PhDs worth of effort to figure out what a mode of action is, or, you know, how it works to control the plant or
not control, you know, the crop, or things like that. So, I mean, I think it's a great question, because this is part of why I got so excited about herbicide discovery and really wanted you know this type of career path is that you really get to spend time iterating through those, you know, experiments, trying to figure out, you know, using your herbicide symptomology, right? A huge call out to everyone competing in the contests,
right? You know, part of my job is going up to the greenhouse, looking at compounds that have never been spread on plants before. And I say, Does this look like anything that that we know, and am I excited about it, right? And that really is the starting point that that some of these new herbicide products are right. Someone sees it in the greenhouse and says, Hey, that looks good. That is worth some follow up. And then we have 99% of the things that come through our early stage screens. That is
an interest. You know, that. Aren't interesting. There's no follow up, right? We're really just looking for, for that, that special active ingredient or molecule to spark our interest, to then warrant the follow up from a project, and, you know, getting out to the field and seeing if it can go into a product eventually,
yeah, and I'd say on our side, it's probably very similar. I don't know the whole discovery side of when they're looking at it, but all I can say is, I mentioned a lot of times we might be some of the first people outside of gelatin to see a product. Most of the time we have at least an idea of what the mode of action is by the time it gets to me. So it has to
happen pretty early on, at least on some level. Again, like Tara said, we might not have every single thing figured out about it, but we've got at least some idea by the time it it comes to us here, here in Vero.
Thank you for entertaining my bonus questions,
anytime Joe, anytime.
Alyssa, do you have any?
only one quick question? I think this is an easy softball question, so we've been asking folks for the past season or so. Is there a silver bullet for weed control?
I've got gonna say no, I don't, I don't think there is one. I mean, I Yep, I'm just gonna stick with no, and then we'll let Cara tackle the finer details. You're welcome, thanks.
Thanks for setting me up for success there. Jason, yeah, I agree. No, there's not. I mean, if only there was, right? I mean, that that would be fabulous, but I don't see it right. I mean, I think just in all you know, everything we've observed the last 510, 1520, years, you know, in terms of how we're controlling weeds, it's we're constantly evolving our tactics, right? You know, don't get me wrong. I, you know, I love my job as a discovery herbicide
biologist, right? But there's more out there than just finding, you know, a new mode of action, a new molecule to control the weeds that we have, right? About every tactic that we've come up with, weeds are evolving, you know, resistance to it, right? Not just the chemical strategies, right? You have, you know, weeds are changing when they're dropping their seeds, which is making our, you know, weed seed destruction. You know, efforts less, you know, less
efficacious, and things like that. So, you know, I think, to me, there's no silver bullet, and that that's okay, because we're all in it together to provide, you know, the insight and the technology, you know, that we all have, and it comes together as a collective right? I think that's what's really cool about this podcast, right? You're bringing in folks from all different experiences, but all with the desire and the
passion for weed control, right? I mean, and you got to be honest, no one grows up wanting to become a weed scientist, right? It's not, you know, not on the top 50 or 100 career paths, right? But, but it's, it's been really fun to really start to build my network and see, hey, everyone's just trying to figure out one piece of their puzzle, and then, you know, sharing that for others. And I think that that's the path forward, right? Providing, you know, maybe I can help provide a
chemical solution, that that's the goal, right? That's, that's the dream, but that, but there's more to it, and it's certainly not going to be a silver bullet that that comes to our rescue.
We haven't gotten one yet, so I don't I don't know what we expect to change in the future. So
here you need to take my mom's tactic when she tries to brag about me, she'll just say, I'm a doctor, and to stop there, and stop all the actual important details that follow that. But then I make that top 50 list of desirable careers.
we all just want to be doctors when we grow up right?
All right, last thing for both of you, which we do like, to provide our guests an opportunity. If you have any social media places you want people to find you time to pitch that. I don't know if either of you is active on Twitter or X that I have found.
I'm not not very active on social media, both personally or professionally. I guess I do have a LinkedIn. So if anyone listening wants to find find me on LinkedIn. Feel free to connect. Send me a message, if you'd like to follow up on anything that we talked about, happy to to to answer any questions there.
Yeah, same, I'm on I'm on LinkedIn. But past that, the social media game is, is not my strong suit in life. But same as Cara, if anybody wants to reach out and connect that way, then happy to do so.
All right, we can post those in the show notes, and assuming people check those every now and then, but LinkedIn is where to find these two. So with that, I do want to thank both the guests. I want to thank the listeners, and we will catch you the next time on War Against Weeds podcast. As always, we thank you for listening to the War Against Weeds podcast. Just another reminder. You can find our podcast hosted on the Crop Protection Network, or CPN, for
short. So this is another great resource that's driven by extension, scientists at different universities for pest management, and with that, we will see you next week on the war against weeds podcast.