There are few new herbicide active ingredients in the pipeline now. In the 1970s and 1980s several new active ingredients were introduced every year. There were lots of jobs in industry and weed science was the place to be. I myself was with ICI/Zeneca from 1983 to 1994 in their R&D group. However, we are now in the middle of the second decade of the 21^st century and new herbicide active ingredients might cost $300 million from discovery to launch. Needless to say there are not many new active ingredients in the pipeline. We have a few agricultural chemical companies that are screening for new active ingredients and perhaps the large scale of glyphosate resistant weed problems will stimulate some of the agricultural...

From the UC Davis News Service • January 21, 2015