DuPont Says Creating Wheat Hybrids to Boost Yields Up to 20%

DuPont Co., the world’s second-largest seed company, said wheat yields would increase 15 percent to 20 percent if it can make a hybrid version of the world’s most planted grain.

Those yield gains would occur with the first commercial product, expected in a decade or so, John Soper, a vice president of research at Wilmington, Delaware-based DuPont, said today in a telephone interview. The company is using conventional and biotechnology approaches to developing hybrid wheat, Soper said.