Investor Presentaiton

An inbred is a plant that possesses only the traits of the self-pollinated plant. Developing inbreds, the parents of hybrids, which exhibit desirable characteristics, is the researcher's first step of field breeding. Proper selection of inbreds for parent lines is critical to developing consistent, top-performing products. Development of new inbreds involves crossing elite inbreds, self-pollinating the progeny and studying several generations of the plant. During early parent line development, each plant possesses different combinations of genes, resulting in various combinations of traits that respond differently to environmental stresses. At this point, the inbreds sort themselves into unique patterns as the offspring plants segregate from the parent lines. During the phases of inbred line development, researchers select the seed from the best plants in the best rows, and plant those seeds for the next generation of testing. At Pioneer, this happens around the globe as researchers evaluate multiple generations of inbreds, using computer networks and other technologies to help them select the best-performing plants. This development phase takes about five generations. Once they have identified excellent inbreds for parents, scientists begin the second major challenge of hybrid development - identifying combinations of parent lines that produce the highest-yielding hybrids. To create hybrids for testing, unrelated parents are crossed to produce experimental hybrids and their performance is tested year after year. 3333 3333 333333 F1 F2 F3 F4 F6 Breeders evaluate the characteristics of large numbers of inbreds each year. Seeds from plants with the best combination of specific traits are saved for further development. 7

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