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Little more than a decade ago, Monsanto Co. began selling the corn seed with a novel gene to help farmers ward off a pest known as the European corn borer.

This year, the Creve Coeur-based agricultural biotech giant expects to sell 4 million acres worth of a new line of corn seed called SmartStax, which contains eight genes to help control bugs and weeds.

Robert T. Fraley, Monsanto’s chief technology officer, oversees the company’s crop and seed technology and research around the globe.

Farmers may be familiar with SmartStax. But how do you explain to those who have never set foot on a farm why it is a significant new product for Monsanto?

It’s going to give the farmer the very best options in terms of bug and weed control of any of the products in the corn marketplace. It’s going to help them improve their yields and their profitability.

How do you convince farmers that the incremental cost of SmartStax is a good investment?

It brings with it an opportunity for better bug control, higher yield and it also has the convenience of having a reduced requirement for planting refuge, which gives farmers an opportunity to improve overall yields in their corn acres and simplifies the whole time frame around planting. (Farmers who plant insect-resistant corn are required to plant refuge zones to make sure insects don’t develop resistance to the technology.)

Can you quantify the benefits from SmartStax in terms of the company’s financial goals?

We plan to sell about 4 million acres worth of SmartStax, and eventually we think SmartStax will replace all of our current triple stack (three gene) products and it will grow the market to a higher level fast cash advance.

You’ve described Monsanto as being on the verge of a "technology explosion." What’s the next major product to be commercialized, and what will it do for farmers?

We had a record number of products our pipeline move through to new phases. There’s lots of exciting stuff there.

I think one of the projects that are really exciting are the projects we’re delivering in soybeans for higher nutrition. We’ve actually got two of them there. One that produces a higher quality soybean oil without the trans fats and without the saturates. It’s going to be a healthier soybean oil that I think both the food industry and consumers will like.

The other soybean product is one where we’ve been able to introduce new genes so that the soybean is producing Omega 3 fatty acids.

There’s a lot of interest in that product because of the heart health benefit of Omega 3, and I think that’s going to be a great product for the industry and for consumers.

Finally, there’s a lot of interest in the genes we have for increasing yield and drought tolerance.

What’s the significance of refuge-in-a-bag?

We think that it’s technically feasible to actually blend the refuge in the bag of seed, so the bag would be 95 percent SmartStax and 5 percent without the added bug control.

That means the farmer would ultimately be able to plant the entire field or farm and never have to stop their planter and reset it. That will be one more level of convenience.

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