SINGAPORE:Corteva Agriscience, Agriculture Division of DowDuPont, today officially opened its Asia Pacific head office in Singapore and announced a series of investments geared towards building expertise and technical capability to support farmers across the region, as governments seek to strengthen food security.

These investments include the establishment of a global analytics center of excellence and a new research and development (R&D) lab, as well as a collaboration strategy designed to encourage the further development of the Asia Pacific Ag-Tech start-up ecosystem.

Corteva Agriscience represents the combined strengths of DuPont Crop Protection, DuPont Pioneer and Dow AgroSciences, which will spin-off on June 1, 2019 to publicly list on the New York Stock Exchange, creating a market-shaping, standalone, pure-play agriculture company with leading positions in Seed Technologies, Crop Protection and Digital Agriculture.

Peter Ford, President, Asia Pacific, Corteva Agriscience, said, “Corteva Agriscience brings together three businesses with deep connections and dedication to generations of farmers.

“With a balanced portfolio of agriculture solutions, 200 years of combined agronomic expertise and an unparalleled innovation engine, we aim to catalyse action with all stakeholders in the food system to champion inclusive agriculture and to help ensure a secure supply of healthy and sustainable food for the region.

“With key collaborators like Singapore’s Economic Development Board and the Singapore Food Agency, we share a commitment to using new innovative approaches to make agriculture value chains more productive and sustainable. We will nurture talent, leverage our R&D capabilities and robust product pipeline, as well as build digital capabilities to secure the future of food for Asia Pacific from our strategic location in Singapore.”

Damian Chan, Executive Director (Chemicals & Materials), Singapore Economic Development Board, said, “We are delighted that Corteva Agriscience has chosen to locate its Asia Pacific head office, Global Analytics Centre of Excellence and Asia Pacific Product Design and Process R&D Lab in Singapore.

“This is testament to Singapore’s robust innovation ecosystem of universities and publicly funded research institutes, which companies can leverage to develop new products and solutions for a rapidly growing Asia and beyond. As countries across the region increasingly focus on food security, we look forward to seeing Singapore’s food and agriculture industries thrive, with market-leaders like Corteva Agriscience taking the lead in securing the future of food in Asia.”

Global Analytics Center of Excellence

In conjunction with the opening of the Asia Pacific head office, Corteva Agriscience™ today announced a collaboration between its Global Analytics Center of Excellence (ACE) with South East Asian (SEA) sustainable agriculture platform, Grow Asia, as part of its commitment to engage with stakeholders across the food value chain.

Through the arrangement, Corteva Agriscience will collaborate with Grow Asia to actively work with Ag-Tech start-ups and other key players in the agriculture ecosystem to explore strategic initiatives addressing the needs of smallholder farmers across SEA. These collaborations are aimed at providing farm enterprises across the region with better access to agricultural insights, decision-making tools, e-commerce channels and new markets with the help of digital solutions.

ACE plans to help address some of the challenges unique to agriculture through the application of data science and analytics.

The center will explore merging simulated and real-time data, enabled by the power of the cloud, to develop predictive capabilities for weather patterns, disease and pest threats impacting agriculture.

This will support farmers in planning for growing seasons. By applying artificial intelligence on data streaming from multiple sources, Corteva Agriscience aims to gain actionable insight on regional and global food supply chains.

The center also plans to use blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to help farmers and food suppliers meet increasing government, regulatory and consumer demands for food traceability and provenance authentication.

Asia Pacific Product Design and Process R&D Lab

Singapore is home to the company’s newest Product Design and Process R&D lab, which joins a network of three other similar facilities globally – Indianapolis (US), Drusenheim (France) and Franco da Rocha (Brazil).

A key focus of this research group is to ensure the successful commercialization of the strong pipeline of products and technologies developed by Corteva Agriscience. By bringing to market environmentally sustainable, differentiated and patented technologies for strategic food crops, including rice and corn, Corteva Agriscience will help farmers protect their crops and to grow more.