By Trish Svoboda

In 2017, Mike McCarville, BASF trait development manager, planted soybeans with a transgenic trait, Nemasphere, developed by BASF to combat soybean cyst nematode (SCN). The trait, now in its eighth year of advanced field testing, has shown promising results, increasing yield potential by 8% on average.

Nemasphere will be commercially available in 2028, pending regulatory approval. It provides farmers with an additional tool to fight SCN, a pest that costs U.S. soybean farmers an estimated $1.5 billion annually. Despite SCN often being an unknown pest, farmers use strategies such as crop rotation and planting SCN-resistant varieties to manage it. BASF’s development of Nemasphere, which uses a novel Cry 14 protein to control SCN, represents a significant breakthrough in SCN management. The trait will be combined with the Enlist E3 herbicide tolerance trait and incorporated into high-yielding seed varieties.