Corteva Agriscience, an agritech company has announced a multi-million-dollar joint venture (JV) with biotech firm Hexagon Bio to accelerate the development of new crop protection solutions inspired by nature. It brings together Corteva’s crop protection capabilities with Hexagon Bio’s natural-product discovery platform, with the stated objective of advancing the identification of new modes of action for agricultural applications.
The JV is designed to advance discovery pipelines across agriculture while allowing each company to continue pursuing its core markets. It marks Corteva’s first collaboration originating from the pharmaceutical sector and Hexagon Bio’s initial entry into agriculture. The partnership has been formed through Corteva Catalyst, the company’s investment and collaboration platform.
Corteva is a global agricultural technology company focused on seeds, crop protection and digital agriculture, supporting farmers in improving productivity and resilience. The company combines in-house R&D with external collaborations for accelerating new approaches to crop protection, including nature-inspired solutions.
Our platform generates more high-value chemistry than a single development track can absorb, so we are excited to launch this JV for agriculture while continuing our focus on discovery of natural products for human health.
According to Hexagon Bio, the partnership will allow the two companies to pursue two critical missions simultaneously, developing transformative therapies for patients and delivering new modes of action for global agriculture.
Hexagon Bio is a biotechnology company that develops advanced platforms to discover novel natural products by combining microbial genomics, artificial intelligence, chemistry and synthetic biology. Initially focused on human health applications, the company is applying its discovery capabilities to agriculture for the first time through its joint venture with Corteva, targeting the identification of new modes of action for crop protection.
Partnership Targets Next-Gen Crop Protection
According to Corteva, the discovery and development of natural products is continuing to evolve, making nature-inspired and science-enhanced solutions an increasingly important and growing market.
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The company notes that natural products have historically underpinned major advances across human, plant and animal health, ranging from antibiotics such as penicillin and the taxane class of cancer therapies to fungicides and insecticides used to protect staple food crops from pests and diseases.
Our partnership with Hexagon Bio expands our discovery engine, taking our crop protection innovation to the next level. As demand for nature-inspired solutions continues to grow, this collaboration allows us to move faster and think bigger.
Corteva said the JV aligns with its broader strategy of expanding innovation through external partnerships, while continuing to invest in new discovery approaches to support the development of future crop protection solutions.
The JV has been established through Corteva Catalyst, the company’s investment and collaboration platform. Since its launch in March 2024, Corteva Catalyst has entered partnerships with 11 companies globally across areas including biologicals, gene editing and emerging technology platforms.
Crop Protection R&D Partnerships
The crop protection JV between Corteva and Hexagon Bio may point to a broader recalibration underway in agricultural R&D, where large incumbents are increasingly looking beyond in-house pipelines to access novel discovery engines.
By combining Corteva’s experience in developing, registering and scaling crop protection products with Hexagon Bio’s natural-product discovery platform, the collaboration targets one of the sector’s most pressing challenges, identifying new modes of action as resistance to existing chemistries continues to spread.
The focus on nature-based solutions also aligns with regulatory and market pressures shaping the future of crop protection. As approval pathways tighten and demand grows for products with improved environmental and safety profiles, platforms capable of delivering targeted modes of action are gaining value.
The venture’s success will depend on whether it can translate scientific promise into scalable, field-ready solutions for farmers.
