CHICAGO, June 18 (Reuters) - Bayer's crop science

division is increasingly turning to artificial intelligence in

its battle against crop killing weeds, the company told Reuters.

Weeds are growing resistant to the herbicides already on the

market, and agribusiness companies like Bayer are in a desperate

search for new modes of action to help farmers kill them.

Bayer's Icafolin product will be its first new mode of

action herbicide in some 30 years when it launches in Brazil in

2028.

Frank Terhorst, executive vice president of strategy and

sustainability at Bayer's Crop Science Division, told Reuters on

Monday that AI could help speed up finding that next new mode of

action.

"You want to find the one where you have maximum performance

on what you want to kill - weeds, and basically no impact on

everything else. And that balance is extremely difficult,"

Terhorst told Reuters after an event in Chicago.

AI, he said, helps the company match the protein structure

of a weed with a molecule that targets that structure, and

enables it to use huge amounts of data.

It is a faster process, he said, and there are fewer

dropouts.

Bob Reiter, head of research and development, crop science,

at Bayer, said in a statement that with AI tools, the timeline

for the discovery of the next new mode of action could be much

shorter.

"If we take the example of early research only, we today

have at least three times the number of new modes of action

compared to ten years ago," he said.