East meets west: regional impact on agrochemical discovery and innovation

The efficient production of the food needed to nourish an expanding global population continues to fuel the demand for new crop protection compounds. This task is made all the more difficult by the need to meet increasingly demanding grower, consumer and regulatory constraints. The discovery and development of new synthetic organic crop protection compounds has been largely the responsibility of the agrochemical industry in Europe, Japan and the USA, with government-funded academic research often playing a crucial role in the early stages of the invention and testing of novel activity. The way in which this process takes place has undergone a dramatic evolution over the past 75 years. Drastic consolidation and globalization among the research and development (R&D)-based companies in these regions have characterized these changes. This evolution in the agrochemical industry has, in turn, shaped the rate of introduction and geographic origin of new crop protection compounds. In spite of these changes, the rate of invention of new classes of crop protection compounds has remained relatively constant. During the past 30 years, the forefront of new compound introductions has moved towards Asia, and Japan in particular. Although there are now more agrochemical companies in Japan involved in the discovery and development of new crop protection compounds than in Europe and the USA combined, on a compound-per-company basis, US companies currently generate the highest output. However, it is expected that there will continue to be changes in the numbers and origins of new crop protection compounds, with contributions continuing from Europe, Japan and the USA, and increasingly from China. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry.