Rob Dunlop is the Vice President of North America Seed at Nutrien Ag Solutions. With nearly 30 years of global experience in agriculture, he has worked across breeding, crop protection innovation, strategy, commercial execution, and technology adoption. Frank Groves is the North American Crop Lead for Cotton, Rice, and Specialty Seeds at Nutrien Ag Solutions, providing strategic direction for these key agricultural sectors. With experience as a cotton agronomist at the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service, he brings deep expertise in crop scienceto Nutrien Ag Solutions after joining the team in 2017. Jennifer Dale is a Product Manager for Canola, Mustard, and Inoculants at Nutrien Ag Solutions, overseeing product strategy and development. She specializes in optimizing seed and crop input solutions to enhance agricultural productivity. Todd Pester is the Senior Manager of North American Seeds Product Management at Nutrien Ag Solutions, leading seed product strategy and development. For over four years, he has focused on optimizing seed offerings to support growers across North America. Through this article, Dunlop and et.al highlights Nutrien Ag Solutions’ commitment to providing growers with a diverse range of seed choices while advancing innovation through proprietary seed development, trait refinement, and strategic partnerships to maximize yields and address agronomic challenges.
As an ag retailer and a seed proprietor, Nutrien Ag Solutions’ main goal is to provide growers with the widest range of choices possible so that they can select the seeds that best suit their operations’ needs, budgets, and goals. Many areas within agriculture are rapidly evolving, and the science behind seed technology is no different. To give you an idea of what’s to come in the seed market in general, we can use our team at Nutrien Ag Solutions as an example. At a high level, our team’s focus over the next three to five years is on continuing to deliver innovative solutions that support growers’ efforts to maximize yields and manage harvest challenges. To get a bit more granular, let’s dive into what’s to come for some of the main crops that we focus on in our seed portfolio through the efforts of our proprietary seed teams, Dyna-Gro and Proven Seed.
Corn
Dyna-Gro is introducing 13 new corn products for the 2025 season. These products feature a range of traits that provide herbicide tolerance and above-ground and below-ground insect protection. New traits joining the Dyna-Gro shelf include PowerCore Enlist and VT4PRO, which offer robust insect protection and weed management flexibility.
Building out the SmartStaxPRO product offerings was a big focus for Dyna-Gro’s 2025 offerings. The products joining the portfolio for this season protect against corn pests and leverage three modes of action against corn rootworm and above-ground pests. These protective properties help to enhance yield potential, demonstrating increases by up to five to seven bushels per acre compared to previous hybrids in the SmartStaxPro line in field trials, as well as reduced losses due to pests and environmental stressors.
Looking to the future of Dyna-Gro corn, you’ll find collaboration with industry partners in trait and technology development to bring solutions to the market that are best suited to meet growers’ needs. By 2030, Dyna-Gro is expecting to launch a next-generation product with novel modes of action against above-ground and below-ground pests and short-statured corn that provide improved standability, extended in-season crop access for applying crop inputs using standard ground equipment, and improved silage quality and tonnage.
Soybeans
For the 2025 season, Dyna-Gro has unveiled 18 new soybean products that feature Enlist E3 and XtendFlex traits that provide weed control with tolerance to glyphosate, glufosinate, and 2,4- D choline salt. This year’s additions to the Dyna-Gro soybean portfolio have shown an average yield increase of two to three bushels per acre in field trials and improved disease tolerance and standability. The varieties include traits that protect against common issues experienced by soybean growers, such as white mold, phytophthora, iron deficiency chlorosis, sudden death syndrome, and soybean cyst nematode.
Dyna-Gro is soft launching its very first proprietary soybean variety from its breeding program for the South region in 2025, with many more candidates in the pipeline for 2026 and beyond. These new varieties will include resistance to key agronomic pests encountered in the region and herbicide resistance traits for flexibility in weed management, making this a key development in seed choices for southern growers.
The job of a crop consultant, agronomist, or seed breeder is to arm growers with the most information to make the best-informed decisions for their land
Dyna-Gro is also expected to have access to new pest management and herbicide tolerance traits from our strategic suppliers, which will be launched in the next two to five years.
Canola
In 2024, Proven Seed launched NTACT Technology with two hybrids, setting a foundation for a pipeline of products tailored to meet growers’ needs. NTACT Technology offers enhanced Pod Shatter protection, maximized yield potential due to the extended pod fill period, and advanced harvest management. The technology also gives growers the choice to delay swathing or opt for straight cutting based on field conditions, resulting in more harvest flexibility. NTACT Technology is designed with the grower top of mind and is tailored to address real-world challenges while performing across varied conditions.
Over the next three to five years, Proven will continue to focus on delivering innovative canola solutions that maximize growers’ yields and manage challenges encountered during harvest.
Cotton
In the past, our Dyna-Gro focus for proprietary cotton was in Western Texas. However, we recently expanded our team to include a breeding team focused on the Mid-South and Southeast regions. Materials from the Mid-South and Southeast team are expected to hit the market in around two to three years, growing our proprietary presence in this area.
Desirable traits in the cotton market change frequently. Dyna-Gro aims to remain competitive with trait technology and realize commercial success with breeding.
Rice
On the heels of DG263L, 2025 sees the launch of Dyna-Gro’s first traited variety, DG563PVL. This variety was a collaboration between our Dyna-Gro team and BASF. Following DG563PVL’s first year on the market, Dyna-Gro aims to explore other traited opportunities.
The team’s focus is on continuing to add to this portfolio over the next few years. In the long term, Dyna-Gro plans to enter the hybrid market for rice seeds.
Common threads between these varieties
A few of the trends between these specific crops that will likely be reflected in the broader seed market are the refinement of traits to protect against pests, increased emphasis on proven results through field testing and tailoring seed genetics to best fit specific geographic regions, work in conjunction with products to maximize plant health and performance, as well as maintain or increase yield potential.
While the technology and options available for seeds may continue to change and advance, it is critical to maintain choice for growers by providing them with many options. The job of a crop consultant, agronomist, or seed breeder is to arm growers with the most information to make the best-informed decisions for their land. Nutrien Ag Solutions’ investments in agronomic, precision agriculture, and soil biome research, along with our vast suite of proprietary crop protection and plant nutritional products, allow our crop consultants to offer industry-leading choices and recommendations to our growers. In addition, our captive financing arm, Nutrien Financial, allows us to support our growers in getting the inputs they need by providing highly competitive financing solutions. We offer fast, flexible and easy capital management strategies tailored to individual crop plans and budget objectives.
