Farmers visiting the Benson Hill booth at the 2024 Farm Progress Show may have chatted with Dan Cosgrove. If so, they discovered how Benson Hill hopes to reinvent common soybeans as higher-value, differentiated products.

“Our goal is better feed, better food and better fuel through better seed,” says Cosgrove, chief administrative officer and general counsel for Benson Hill, based in St. Louis. “We’re finding quality traits through proprietary methods using AI technology and gene editing with non-GMO soybeans. Later, we will add herbicide tolerance to specific varieties.”

Benson Hill is betting its future on the ability to find unique traits that will bring more value to standard crops. The company’s mission is to do this more quickly than in traditional breeding programs.

There are other companies in this space. Some, like Benson Hill, also sell seed. Cibus, another ag technology company searching for unique traits in major crops including corn, soybeans and canola, does not sell seed. Instead, it strictly develops and licenses plant traits to seed companies for royalties.

Trait developers

While these two companies followed different paths, both use gene editing and proprietary technologies not available to plant breeders until recently. Here is a closer look:

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Benson Hill. This company took a huge step forward in 2019 when it acquired soybean genetics from Schillinger Genetics. Until recently, Benson Hill also operated a soybean crushing facility near Seymour, Ind. However, the company sold it to White River Nutrition in October 2023, while maintaining agreements for the buyer to continue processing Benson Hill proprietary soybeans. Meal produced there can be used at large poultry farms nearby or by other end users.

“Benson Hill has undergone a positive transformation in the past 18 months,” explains Aaron Robinson, vice president of product development. “We’re focusing on our core expertise, which is finding higher-value traits for soybeans, breeding varieties with these traits and working with partners to develop expanding markets for specialized soybean products.”

At the company’s core is the CropOS technology platform, using AI technology to sort through thousands of possible traits and variety combinations to predict ones with the greatest chance for success.

Then, multiple generations are produced rapidly through Benson Hill’s Crop Accelerator program. Karla Santos explains that they grow more than four generations of soybeans per year in climate-controlled growth chambers. Robinson notes that this is one reason why the company can cut two or more years off the time it takes to develop a soybean variety.

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While Benson Hill licenses and sells products to other companies, it also sells seed to farmers. Learn more about Benson Hill seed at bensonhill.com.

Currently, Benson Hill offers six differentiated soybean product platforms:

Working with partners, the company demonstrated extra value in these products, which means premiums for farmers growing them under contract. Broilers fed formulations with UHP-LO supplements posted 102.3% body weight compared to broilers fed commodity soybean meal, and at 96% of total feed cost for commodity meal diets. UHP-LO soybeans contain 16% more crude protein, 8% more metabolizable energy and 92% fewer oligosaccharides than commodity soybeans.

The company has set aggressive goals for the future, Robinson says. Those include broadening the soybean portfolio to 35 varieties soon, launching a range of soybean varieties for biofuels and crude oil near the end of the decade, and introducing varieties for animal feed with traits like higher energy density and better protein quality early in the next decade.

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Cibus. This 20-plus-year-old company carved out a niche in the industry. Holding over 500 patents, granted or pending, Cibus’ goal is to be extremely efficient at one critical function: “We edit complex traits that are in a customer’s germplasm — we don’t have our own germplasm,” explains Jim Radtke, senior vice president for trait development with Cibus. “Then, we return a market-ready plant to the customer.”

Apparently, customers agree. While the ultimate benefactors are farmers who gain access to varieties of various crops with improved traits, Cibus customers include Nutrien and P&G. Cibus doesn’t sell seed itself, but instead licenses traits.

The heart of Cibus’ success lies in gene editing, Radtke explains. The company uses proprietary gene-editing technology to develop traits such as improved disease resistance much faster than could be done through traditional breeding programs. The company works with canola, rice, corn and soybeans.

“We look to develop important traits, and that varies with the crop,” Radtke says. “For example, one common problem with canola is pod shattering, and we focused on a trait that confers pod shatter reduction. We typically look for traits that improve disease resistance, too.”

TOWARD BETTER CANOLA: These canola plants in the Cibus greenhouse in San Diego are part of the company’s breeding program geared at developing improved traits in the oil crop. (Cibus)

Installing a new trait in germplasm supplied by a company typically takes about three and a half years. Then, the seed company does further testing before rolling it out to farmers. That cuts off a significant amount of time, allowing improved varieties to reach farm fields faster, Radtke says.

Cibus took a major step forward in June 2023, merging with Calyxt, another player in developing traits in plants. Just recently, Cibus and Biographica announced a collaborative pilot project focused on advancing disease resistance in canola and oilseed rape. Biographica is a U.K.-based leader in AI and machine learning for gene discovery.

The goal for this specific project matches Cibus’ overall strategy, Radtke believes. He adds that the company’s No. 1 priority is setting the stage for future crop improvement as efficiently and quickly as possible.