# A glimpse of the future of agronomy



## gene_stl (Oct 29, 2017)

One of the advantages of working at a university is that every once in a while there is a speaker brought who speaks on a subject you might be interested in.

On Tuesday and Wednesday the place where I work hosted a guy who used to work at Monsanto who is involved in a start up which makes RNA agricultural products. These are little snippets of double stranded RNA which can be sprayed onto things like current products , but hopefully will be safer , more effective and possibly (eventually even cheaper)

His first product is likely to be an RNA Fire Ant killer that won't bother bees or even other ants. He and his company are here in St. Louis and showed that fire ants are in southern Missouri and he said it was just a matter of time. The reason he chose fire ants is that it is a big enough market but that the big boys (he mentioned Monsanto , Dow , Syngenta , Bayer) don't want him "playing in their sandbox" . I am sure one of them will snap up his company (RNAgri) very soon.

Monsanto has products under their BioDirect label of various similar types.

The interesting fact he mentioned was that he can treat for potato beetles with two grams for acre. He also showed that he can produce these things for a decreasing price per gram (about $5) They can make insecticides , very specific herbicides , things to spray onto Roundup resistant weeds so that they lose their resistance , resistance to viruses and bacteria. They probably can make nerve gases with this technology too but I didn't have the nerve to ask him about that.

https://www.rnagri.com/
https://monsanto.com/innovations/agricultural-biologicals/
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/540136/the-next-great-gmo-debate/
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rna+interference

They are all working on agriculture at first but I think turf culture is never very far behind. I am sure every one of us has a container of Roundup and this is the pipeline where it, as well as things like Tenacity and Pylex start out.


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## pennstater2005 (Jul 17, 2017)

So someday maybe I could spray RNA across the lawn and it would shut off the gene that allows certain weeds or weed grasses to come back up. Please, before I die, please!! Interesting articles linked.


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