Corteva and AgPlenus develop a new mechanism of herbicidal action APCO-12 to solve the problem of weed resistance

AgPlenus, a subsidiary of Evogene, an Israeli biotechnology company, announced that it and Corteva have made significant progress in the development of a novel herbicide molecule, successfully identifying a new family of molecules that exhibit herbicidal effects through a novel mechanism of action, APCO-12.

The collaboration, which began in 2020, aims to leverage AgPlenus' computing technology platform and Corteva’s product development capabilities to develop new molecules with entirely new mechanisms of action for weeding. In the next step, the collaboration will focus on leveraging AgPlenus' cutting-edge computing technology, supported by Evogene's ChemPass AI technology engine and Corteva’s industry-leading R&D capabilities, to optimize the identified molecular classes into commercial-grade products.

In recent years, weed resistance to existing herbicides has become a major challenge in global agriculture, in part because of the scarcity of new mechanism herbicides over the past 30 years, most commercially available herbicides are based on small molecules that inhibit target proteins in weeds and cause weed death. The collaboration between AgPlenus and Corteva was initiated to address this issue. The partnership is expected to accelerate the introduction of a new class of herbicide products with a new mechanism of action, providing innovative solutions for farmers around the world.