Posted September 7, 2015

 

By Seshadri Ramkumar (s.ramkumar@ttu.edu)

 

LUBBOCK, Texas – Bayer CropScience recently opened a new Seed Innovation Center in the Texas Tech University campus here.

 

The innovation center will host Bayer’s global cotton business, state-of-the-art research laboratories and green house to support research in cotton, soybean and wheat.

 

Bayer CropScience is world’s No. 1 cotton seed producer. It invests $1 billion in crop science R&D. Ten percent of its gross sales goes back into research. The 100,000 square-foot innovation complex cost about $16 million and will have about 100 employees.

 

The greenhouse can hold 30,000 mid-size cotton plants and 7,500 full size soybean plants. The Seed innovation Center has growth rooms for plant cells and state-of-the-art molecular biology laboratories.

 

According to Adrian Percy, global head of R&D, Bayer CropScience, the center will focus on improvements in cotton varieties, introducing new traits and improve other aspects like herbicide tolerance, etc.

 

The new innovation center is a good showcase for ongoing collaboration between Bayer and Texas Tech University, said Texas Tech alumnus Mike Gilbert, global head, Breeding and Trait Development at Bayer CropScience. The collaboration has been ongoing for more than 15 years, with Bayer beginning its cotton seed business in Lubbock in 1998 with just three employees. Today, Lubbock is the global headquarters for Bayer’s cottonseed business.

 

The opening ceremony in Lubbock attracted a large gathering that included policymakers, leaders in the Lubbock community, cotton researchers and key cotton industry leaders such as cotton producer Dale Swinburn of Tulia, Texas; Kater Hake, vice president of Agriculture Research at Cotton Incorporated, Cary, N.C.; and Steve Verett, executive vice president of Lubbock-based Plains Cotton Growers.

 

FiberMax and Stoneville cottonseeds are the two well-known brands of Bayer CropScience.

 

Seshadri Ramkumar, PhD, FTA (honorary) is a professor of Nonwovens & Advanced Materials Laboratory at Texas Tech University.