Replies to post #123 on Monument Circle Acquisition Corp (MON)

[Democritus_of_Abdera]

Re: Numbers of RR2Y varieties in 2010...

Dew, I got the numbers in my Nov 24 msg (#msg-43877506) from the Nov 11 Investor Day presentation by Robert T. Fraley, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer MON.... In general, I’ve been impressed favorably by his presentations and I tend to trust his numbers more than those of Casale (who’s numbers I almost always suspect to be generalizations or spin). It’s disconcerting to see the descrepency that you are chewing on... perhaps, Farley is talking about what is available from the lab and the others are talking about the number of varieties they have decided to commercialize. Even so, Farley’s numbers, being powers of 10, are almost certainly generalizations rather than fact.

I’ve included Farley’s framing of the statement in an effort to avoid taking it out of context:

Now, before I get into to our further discussion of the pipeline, I wanted to – and talk more about the biotech and the germplasm components. I want to address about three or four pretty, what I would call hot or timely topics and updates that aren’t in your books. So I’m just going to talk about three or four things here. I’m going to start with the Roundup Ready 2 Yield. And I thought Ted did a great job yesterday of highlighting the Roundup Ready 2 Yield and where we stand from the field perspective. And I think the punch line was despite a lot of things you see on the Internet and then the blog, the analysis of the data that we’ve been able to generate and review shows that the Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybean varieties are yielding at or above the 7% target and have performed well.

I think the couple of points I would add to it is that, that yield gain in that zone of seven to 10% is huge. I mean, in a breeding context, breeder struggle in soybean to add three or four-tenths of a point of yield every year, so to have a technology platform that can add seven to 10% yield is a huge advantage.

I think the other point that Ted made which is absolutely right on, is even with this huge advantage you’re going to win about 70 to 80% of the time. So if someone wants to go in, look at it side by side and find an example where we’ve – where the technology hasn’t won that’s going to be possible to do that’s yield. But it doesn’t take away from the significant platform gains that Roundup Ready 2 Yield represents.

I think the other key point that Ted talked about is the extremely strong performance of the class of 2010, which is going to be the bulk of the seeds that’s in the marketplace next year. So I made the point with several of you when we were talking last night that the beauty of biotech is that we can put that new gene into the soybean plant. The challenge we always start with is we start with one plant that then has to be bred across all of the varieties and the geographies for soybean. So in this first year we have 15 varieties derived from that first plant that were spaced across the country. In the class of 2010, we’ll have 150; in the class of 2011, we’ll have 1,500. So what that means is that the performance and feat of this product will get much, much better as that breeding program drives the engine. And that’s what we’re exactly seeing with 2009, 2010 and 2011 classes, so that’s outstanding.

I think the other point to make as we think about the Roundup Ready 2 Yield platform, and I know you’ll appreciate this, this is the first product in what will become a multi-stacked soybean platform. So as we go through with the launch of Roundup Ready 2 Yield add to it the Dicamba product, our yield gene, the Omega-3 product, the Vistive III product, we’re working our way within just a couple of years to a multi-stacked soybean platform and that will continue to build uniqueness in value and differentiation in the portfolio.