Why 3MG R&D? To Be A Genetic Alternative!
We believe that the marketplace needs to have options to meet its corn seed needs. The corn seed business has become dominated by GMO traits from a few companies. While these GMO traits do perform quite well, we want to make sure those countries that choose to be GMO-free, the consumers who desire to have organic corn products available, and those companies looking to differentiate themselves in the market place by being GMO-free have a unique option for obtaining GMO-free corn seeds.
As a business we look for opportunities that fit our skill set and environment and allow us to utilize them to their fullest potential. In Puerto Rico we face consistent high temperatures, dry soil conditions, high levels of insect pressure from several species and various disease complexes in our normal course of business. While we have developed the agronomic skills necessary to manage these stresses in Puerto Rico to produce good crops for customers, we have decided to utilize our environment’s abiotic and biotic pressures to identify genes that already exist in corn to combat these issues. We combine these various genes as discovered, thereby combining multiple modes of action against these pressures to develop non-GMO corn that has insect tolerance, disease tolerance, heat tolerance, drought tolerance, and high quality grain for the end user. These new corn hybrids will be available to license to retail corn companies and others throughout the world.
We are not against GMOs in our company. Most of the work that we do for our contract research business is in assisting the development of new GMO products that will benefit many people around the world. That said, we are in favor of free markets and we see a growing market segment desiring organic and non-GMO corn. We can participate in these markets and be very competitive with the products we develop.
We are farmers, too, and believe that our products should benefit the farmer and the consumer equally. The corn hybrids we sell should reduce the production risk to the farmer while providing a high quality grain or forage to the consumer. We also believe that the increase in production needed to feed a growing population will come from more marginal production areas around the world. Our environment and breeding strategies allow us the unique opportunity to be focused on the more challenging, often overlooked production areas with our development program.