Novel indirect assays for predictive crop performance

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INTEREST AREA: Plant Breeding

Agricultural systems face enormous challenges in the coming decades as we encounter an expanding population and an increasinlgy volatile environment. The demand for food is expected to increase at least 50% by 2050. It is vital to enhance crop performance to realize higher yields from existing land in production. Over time, new innovations have been introduced into plant plant breeding to create the modern methods leveraged today.

At Corteva, our goal is to develop effective, sustainable, and durable solutions to agricultural challenges. Driving genetic gain to help enable farmers to operate sustainably and profitably is core to delivering for our future. To aid in the discovery and evaluation of improved crop varieties, Corteva Agriscience invites public and private sector scientists to join our efforts by submitting a proposal describing a novel predictive assay for soybean production.

Closed

Submission Deadline:
November 14, 2022 at 11:59pm EST 

Who Should Apply

Public and private scientists

Compensation

Up to $15,000; potential follow up research collaboration

  • What Are We Seeking?
  • Who Should Submit?
  • What to Submit
  • What to Expect

What Are We Seeking?

Modern plant breeding leverages many forms of evaluation including genetic predictions, intensive field characterization and biotic and abiotic phenotypes to enable decision making and material advancement. Through research, Corteva delivers best-in-class seeds and crop protection solutions to farmers. By more accurately predicting performance in early generations, it will be more efficient to drive genetic gain which will lead to an increase in the amount of food a farmer can produce per hectare. Corteva is interested in receiving proposals, which may include, but are not limited to novel specialized instrumentation, computational tools, information or techniques that correlate or predict crop yield or performance.

Any proposed solution should address the following Solution Requirements:  

Must have:

    1. Suitable for use with soybeans

    2. Suitability for use in research, 2-row plots between 10-20 feet in length; across genotypes

    3. Expectation of adapting to diverse growing conditions (e.g. seasons, geographies)

Nice to have:

    1. Assay applicable to additional commodity crops, especially corn

    2. A reasonable expectation of scalability

Who Should Submit?

Public and private scientists. Please indicate if you are interested in entering a future collaboration with Corteva. If so, describe what expertise, capabilities, or facilities you have for indirect predictive assay testing.

 

What to Submit

By the deadline, submitters are asked to agree to the Terms and Conditions during the Wazoku crowd process.

The submitted proposal should include: 

    1. Abstract of the proposed solution

    2. A detailed description of the solution including an example and/or proposed protocol

    3. A summary of any previous or pilot data along with literature that supports the feasibility of this assay to predict crop yield or performance, as available

    4. References for supporting information to substantiate the proposal, as available

What to Expect

Submitters can expect the following steps to occur after the submission deadline for this challenge has passed:

This an Ideation Challenge, facilitated by Wazoku Crowd, which has the following unique features:

  • There is a guaranteed award. The award(s) will be paid to the best submission(s) as solely determined by the Corteva. The total payout will be $15,000, with at least one award being no smaller than $5,000 and no award being smaller than $2,000.
  • The Solvers are not required to transfer exclusive intellectual property rights to the Corteva. Rather, by submitting a proposal, the Solver grants to the Corteva a royalty-free, perpetual, and non-exclusive license to use any information included in this proposal, including for promotional purposes.
  • After the Challenge deadline, the Corteva will complete the review process and make a decision with regards to the Winning Solution(s). All Solvers who submit a proposal will be notified about the status of their submissions within 30 days of the submission; however, no evaluation of individual submissions will be provided.