Governor Mike Braun today celebrated a major economic development win as Corteva selected Indianapolis as the global headquarters for its new market-leading crop protection and nature-inspired technologies company, choosing Indiana over multiple competing states. The decision, tied to Corteva’s planned separation into two public companies later this year, deepens an Indiana presence that traces back to 1989.
“Indiana is a global leader in agbioscience – and today’s announcement is just more proof,” said Gov. Braun. “Corteva’s decision to base its global headquarters here reinforces our national reputation as an innovation corridor, nurturing a world-leading bioscience industry that supports hundreds of thousands of Hoosier jobs and generates billions of dollars for the state’s economy. Indiana continues its winning streak.”
Corteva announced last year it would split into two public companies, with the crop protection business retaining the Corteva name. That company, anchored in Indiana, will continue to be a Fortune 500 company with a world-class team of scientists and capabilities, helping farmers solve some of their toughest challenges.
By headquartering in Indianapolis, Corteva taps the full power of Indiana’s biosciences ecosystem, talent, partners and infrastructure, supporting innovation from discovery to delivery. Indiana’s bioscience sector contributes more than $125 billion to the state’s economy. Corteva has publicly stated its future strategy will be built around operational excellence and differentiated innovation, particularly biologicals. Indiana delivers both and now stands at the leading edge of natural and microbial crop innovation worldwide.
“Indianapolis continues to prove we are a city where innovative companies can grow and lead,” said Mayor Joe Hogsett. “Corteva’s continued investment builds on that momentum and reflects the strength of the City’s partnership with the company, our deep talent base and our growing agriculture and innovation ecosystem. We are proud Corteva calls Indianapolis home and proud of what this announcement represents for our city’s future.”
“Corteva has long, proud roots in the state of Indiana, and the employees and management team are pleased to continue to be able to call Indiana home for their groundbreaking innovation,” said Corteva Chair Greg Page, who will also chair the new Corteva after separation. “The Hoosier state is an established leader in global biosciences innovation and the Corteva headquarters will serve as the company’s core research and development hub, driving its impressive pipeline of synthetic, biological, and natural product innovation, while also anchoring Corteva Catalyst, its investment and collaboration platform.”
Corteva’s decision builds on Gov. Braun’s recently announced $1 billion, 10-year life sciences initiative focused on creating 100,000 new jobs within plant, animal and human health.
Community Support:
U.S. Senator Todd Young (R-Ind.) “I am grateful for Corteva’s continued investment in Indiana and its skilled Hoosier workforce. With today’s exciting announcement, Corteva will remain at the forefront of innovation, drive new research to improve lives, and further demonstrate that our state is a national leader in biosciences.”
Don Lamb, State Director, Indiana Department of Agriculture “Corteva’s decision to reaffirm Indiana as its global headquarters is a tremendous vote of confidence in our state’s workforce, our research ecosystem, and our long-standing leadership in agriculture and agbioscience. We’re proud that Indiana will continue to be the home base for a company shaping the future of food and farming worldwide. ISDA looks forward to supporting Corteva as it grows, innovates, and continues investing in the communities that make this partnership possible.”
Andrea Richter-Garry, Interim CEO & President, Indy Economic Development “When a best-in-class global company continues to choose Indianapolis, it says something powerful about who we are and where we are headed. This announcement reflects the strength of a long-standing partnership, the momentum of our growing agriculture and innovation ecosystem, and the confidence global companies continue to place in Indy. Corteva’s decision also reaffirms the strength of our life sciences workforce and the top-tier quality of life Indy provides to retain global talent.”
Christy Wright, President & CEO, AgriNovus Indiana “Corteva chose Indiana—again. A world leader in crop protection and biologicals is doubling down on this state and its ecosystem to build the natural-products frontier that will define the industry’s next chapter.”
Matt Mindrum, President & CEO, Indy Chamber “Corteva’s decision to keep and grow its headquarters in Indianapolis is a powerful affirmation of Indy’s position as a global leader in bioscience innovation. This investment reflects the strength of our talent, the depth of our business ecosystem, and the collaborative momentum driving our region forward. Global companies choose to grow where innovation can accelerate, and today’s announcement reinforces that the Indy region is built for bold moves and long-term success.”
Food is health is a growing conversation across the agbioscience landscape and research is moving the conceptual to tangible solutions. Dr. Lavanya Reddivari from Purdue University joins this week to talk groundbreaking food science research, advancing discovery through the innovation pipeline and how her family roots are making something old new again.
Highlights include:
A high level overview of her research at Purdue and its impact on food is health
How Lavanya views food is health from a modern, scientific research perspective
Her team’s recent findings of a compound in blueberries that aids people with digestive diseases; the discovery process and how it informed follow up
Nutrition as a support function for chronic illnesses that are critically impacting the U.S. population and her team’s “aha” moment where the gut microbiome was the foundation to overall health
A grant Lavanya’s team received through the Heartland Children’s Nutrition Collaborative and what it has enabled their research to do
How the right partnerships have enabled them to move through different stages of their exploration
Lavanya’s family roots and how this story is personal for her
Applying her team’s findings and putting them into practice
How Lavanya wants to see this research make an impact on the world and the health of its people
What she believes are our biggest opportunities to advance Food is Health, given our strengths in Indiana
What’s ahead with her laboratory team that has her most excited
Elanco Animal Health announced it has closed its acquisition of AHV International, a Dutch innovator in farm animal health. The acquisition advances Elanco’s presence into the growing global dairy market, offering dairy producers an expanded portfolio of products that support transition cow health, well-being and improve productivity.
“The AHV addition is a strategic fit for Elanco by providing innovative tools for producers and veterinarians to improve the well-being of dairy cows. AHV’s portfolio meaningfully expands our solutions for sustainability, animal welfare and transition cow health, as well as for retail packaged goods. Together with our dedicated scientific and technical Elanco team, the integration will unite the strengths of both organizations to deliver a comprehensive solution portfolio for our customers,” said Dr. Ramiro M. Cabral, Executive Vice President of Elanco International.
While consumer demand for milk and dairy products continues to rise globally, dairy producers worldwide face significant challenges. Increasing accessibility and affordability of dairy products hinges on healthy and productive cows. The World Organization for Animal Health reports 20% of livestock productivity is lost to death and disease annually, impacting global food security and producer profitability.
This acquisition allows Elanco to offer more proactive nutritional health interventions that can be tailored to the individual health of each cow to meet their health and disease prevention needs when they’re most susceptible. For example:
StopLac is designed to reduce milk production in dairy cows during the dry-off process at the end of a lactation cycle.
Additionally, AHV’s Quorum Sensing Technology, based on plant-derived extracts disrupts biofilm formation, exposing pathogens to the animal’s natural immune system. Helping the animal’s own immune system better fight disease reduces the need for antibiotics.
Elanco aims to enhance global accessibility of these innovations. By combining Elanco’s scientific rigor, technical teams and strong distribution experience, these have the potential to become essential tools for the dairy industry, leading to improved animal well-being and further reducing the need for antibiotics on farms.
To learn more about this expanded portfolio of solutions, visit the AHV website.
Company’s platform technology will introduce genetic tools to improve nitrogen use efficiency
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Novin AgriTech, a startup whose platform combines agricultural expertise and biotechnology to develop novel traits for cereal crops, has received an eight-month, $174,906 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
Mohsen Mohammadi, co-founder of Novin AgriTech, is the wheat breeder and an associate professor of plant breeding and genetics in Purdue University’s Department of Agronomy in the College of Agriculture. He leads Purdue’s soft red winter wheat breeding program, with research focused on improving grain yield, enhancing resistance to Fusarium head blight and dissecting the genetics of sustainability traits.
Mohammadi developed two patented cereal transformation platforms: InPACT, Novin AgriTech’s core platform, and a nanoparticle-assisted ultrasound gene delivery system. They enable direct genetic manipulation of elite wheat germplasm. He and his colleagues will use the SBIR funding to develop the nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) trait and introduce it into elite wheat cultivars.
“The project will reinforce Novin AgriTech’s positioning as a platform company,” he said. “Our mission is to empower the cereal crop ecosystem with practical, scalable and future-ready solutions that tackle the evolving challenges of food security, health, resource efficiency, and crop resilience to biotic and abiotic stresses.”
Benefits of the funded project
Mohammadi said the eight-month SBIR-funded project will culminate in several strategic advantages for Novin AgriTech.
Technical validation of core platform. “Successful delivery will demonstrate our genotype-independent, tissue culture-free transformation platform can be applied to a commercially critical trait: NUE and farm-ready cultivars,” Mohammadi said. “This major proof point will show the platform is fast, trait-relevant and scalable across elite wheat varieties.”
Platform expansion to other traits and crops. “Once validated for NUE, the same workflow can be rapidly extended to other complex traits like abiotic stress and disease resistance, and other crops like barley, oat and sorghum,” he said.
Acceleration toward commercialization. “By identifying the promising early-generation plants within eight months, the project significantly de-risks downstream development and shortens timelines to field trials and regulatory positioning, especially in gene-editing-friendly markets like the United States,” he said.
Strengthened partnering and investment positions. “Demonstrating NUE improvements in wheat, the most widely cultivated food crop in the world, provides compelling validation for strategic partnerships with ag biotech companies and nondilutive funding including additional grants from the federal government and venture investors,” Mohammadi said. “The project also directly supports discussions with other companies by providing data-backed credibility.
“In summary, completion of this project will transform the technology from technology demonstration into a high-value product by validating real-world nitrogen efficiency gains; reducing adoption risk; and strengthening Novin AgriTech’s positioning for Phase II funding, industry partnerships and market entry,” Mohammadi said.
Other Novin AgriTech milestones
Mohammadi said Novin AgriTech recently established a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the USDA. He said InPACT has been advanced in part through this collaboration.
“This CRADA milestone provides us (a) strong collaborative USDA-Agricultural Research Service environment, further advancing the technology to mutually shared objectives such as gene editing techniques,” he said.
CountryMark Cooperative Holding Corp. has announced it intends to return $52 million in cash patronage and equity redemptions to its owners in June of 2026, as approved by the Board of Directors. This distribution will return profits for cooperative member business from 2025 purchases in gasoline, diesel, lubricants, and equipment.
CountryMark’s owners are 14 member cooperatives based in Indiana and Ohio, who serve customers in Indiana and the surrounding states.
“We are pleased to have the ability to return profits to our owners,” said Matt Smorch, President & CEO of CountryMark. “CountryMark serves our owners by supplying the fuels and lubricants they need, while operating our assets in a safe, reliable and compliant manner to enable future success.”
The company saw many challenges in 2025 that limited profitability. CountryMark’s refinery undertook a major scheduled maintenance turnaround in the summer, with many process units idled or at minimum rates for over 40 days. Additionally, CountryMark invested $100M to expand diesel production capabilities and improve diesel fuel quality, which added the ability for CountryMark to co-process soybean oil to produce renewable diesel. In the fall, further downtime was planned for maintenance and improvements.
“The culmination of the investments made for the future and a weaker margin environment in 2025 actually reduced our income to a break-even in 2025,” said Smorch. “However, CountryMark was awarded retroactive Small Refinery Exemptions, as the EPA addressed outstanding petitions for the industry. Recouping some of our compliance cost from 2023 and 2024 was the sole driver of our ability to distribute earnings this year.”
In August of 2025, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it was acting on the backlog of 175 Small Refinery Exemptions (SRE) from 38 small refineries for 2016-2024 compliance years. “In consultation with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), EPA reviewed and considered information submitted by each petitioning small refinery. EPA then evaluated each SRE petition consistent with the Clean Air Act and case law,” according to a press release issued by the EPA Press Office.
CountryMark continues to support more clarity on the RFS program for small refiners. Currently H.R. 1346 is being considered by the House, which CountryMark strongly supports. The amendments in H.R. 1346 allow year-round E-15 sales, remove current restrictions and is positive for the farm community. Additionally, this bill removes the uncertainty of the RFS and future compliance cost for many small refining companies like CountryMark.
“CountryMark has a long history of providing biodiesel and ethanol-blended fuels to the market,” said Smorch. “Nearly all gasoline we supply contains ethanol, and biodiesel blends are available at all CountryMark terminals. Even so, we continue to incur substantial annual RFS compliance costs.”
CountryMark is headquartered in Indianapolis, operates an oil refinery in Mt. Vernon, IN, along with crude and refined product pipelines and terminals throughout Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky. CountryMark products include PLUS gasoline, Advantage Lubricants, and it’s well known flagship diesel product Premium Dieselex-4 with ISO Technology. For more information, visit countrymark.com.
New brand builds upon century-long legacy, reflects ambition to advance science to feed and fuel the world
INDIANAPOLIS, May 4, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Corteva (NYSE: CTVA) announced today that the company that will comprise its current advanced seed and genetics business, previously referred to as “SpinCo,” will be branded Vylor, Inc. Corteva’s planned separation remains on track for the fourth quarter of 2026.
With more than 4,000 germplasm patents and more than 2,000 biotechnology patents, Vylor’s innovation engine will be anchored in the industry’s most elite germplasm and transformative biotechnology, including a world-class pipeline that includes gamechangers like proprietary hybrid wheat, leadership in gene editing, multi-disease resistance corn and next-generation biofuels. The company will leverage its next generation scientific expertise to further strengthen its core business while exploring opportunities to expand to new row crops – and potentially beyond – to help farmers feed and fuel the world.
The new brand reflects this vision. For example, the stylized “l” in the brand represents the negative space formed by a single chromosome, reflecting the role genetics has played and will continue to play in advancing agriculture. The use of green, maroon and blue in its expanded color palette is a nod to its Pioneer, Brevant, Hogemeyer and Corteva heritage. The name itself is derived from the word “valor,” honoring the valor of the generations of employees and farmers whose hard work helped feed the world. It’s also a nod to the mindset of the new company: vying for every opportunity.
“Vylor traces its roots back a century, to a single idea: that innovation could transform agriculture, and with it, the world. This belief – in the power of science to advance agriculture and help farmers feed and fuel a growing population – remains our North Star,” said future Vylor CEO Chuck Magro. “From food security to energy security, powered by groundbreaking technology, elite germplasm and an advanced product portfolio, Vylor will be uniquely positioned to help solve some of the world’s toughest challenges. The new brand reflects both this ambition and the determination to achieve it.”
Vylor will launch from a position of strength, with the largest seed production network in the world, world-record yields in corn and soybeans and industry leading route-to-market. The globally recognized brands that will comprise Vylor have earned a #1 and #2 market share position for key crops in almost every region they serve.
Last week Governor Mike Braun today announced IN AI, a new statewide initiative focused on helping businesses grow, create jobs, and increase wages through the practical application of human-centered artificial intelligence. The initiative will be executed by the CEOs of Indiana Corporate Partnership (CICP) and will work directly with employers across the state to accelerate AI adoption in ways that strengthen businesses and expand opportunity for Hoosiers.
Joining us this week is Ting Gootee, CICP’s EVP of Digital Adoption and Managing Director of Crossroads Health Ventures. She talks agbioscience, AI adoption and finding the one thing businesses need to solve for – not the dire need to launch a full-blown digital strategy right out of the gate.
Highlights include:
How CICP defines digital adoption in the context of its mission
The work Ting is leading and what the organization aims to accomplish through its branded initiatives like AgriNovus
Biggest headwinds businesses and organizations face when trying to adopt digital solutions, particularly in what are traditionally offline industries
How Indiana is positioning itself to build a more AI-ready economy and the role of digital adoption within that transformation
Striking a balance between short-term innovation wins and establishing sustainable, long-term impact across industries statewide to create real impact
How digital adoption is changing the skills and education needed for the state’s future workforce
The role of partnerships among business, academia and government in maintaining talent pipelines to keep pace with tech advancement (and where we sit in that journey today)
How Ting views our opportunity to be a differentiated hub for technology advancement in Indiana
Emerging trends and technologies that have Ting most excited
What Indiana ideally looks like from a digital adoption standpoint over the next five-ten years
The Food and Nutrition Administration, formerly the Food and Nutrition Service, will refocus its 16 nutrition assistance programs
(Washington, D.C., April 30, 2026) — Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services mission area announced its intention to introduce the Food and Nutrition Administration. This shift will include a reorganization and relocation, all to move program leadership and staff from Washington, D.C. to hub and program compliance locations across the U.S. This shift in customer service will not disrupt program execution nor any endeavor to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse across USDA’s 16 nutrition assistance programs.
“On my first day leading the People’s Department, I shared several commitments to our state, tribal, territory, and local government partners, including prioritizing customer service and infusing each nutrition program with new energy and vision,” saidSecretary Brooke L. Rollins. “This reorganization is designed with those commitments in mind. I look forward to working with our partners as we continue to nourish children and families in need through nutrition programs that not only are provided by America’s farm families, but programs that pave a pathway to better health and economic stability.”
“This reorganization is long overdue,” said Deputy Secretary Stephen A. Vaden. “The Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services mission area has not had a Senate-confirmed Under Secretary in nearly two decades, and the shift to the Food and Nutrition Administration will better align with other benefit programs administered across the federal government. This reorganization also reduces duplicative management and complexity within the agency, better prioritizes State service and participant needs, and expands the Department’s presence to fight fraud, waste, and abuse.”
“As part of this reorganization, we are changing our structure from regional offices to Hubs that will offer improved program support across the nation,” saidDeputy Under Secretary Patrick Penn. “This new structure will enhance our customer service to the millions of families reliant on these programs and allow for greater employee and partner collaboration.”
As part of this effort, the FNA Administrator will remain in Washington, D.C., along with a small footprint to be responsive to Congress, interagency needs, regulatory work, and policy coordination.
Programmatically, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will be relocated to Indianapolis, IN; the Child Nutrition Programs will be relocated to Dallas, TX; the Supplemental Nutrition and Safety Programs will be relocated to Kansas City, MO; and research programs will be relocated to Raleigh, NC. The fifth Hub in Denver, CO, will serve as the Emergency Management and Continuity of Operations location. Lastly, retailer operations and compliance will be across four offices: Atlanta, GA; Los Angeles, CA; Dallas, TX; and New York, NY.
These actions will realign the Department’s focus to the States who administer USDA nutrition programs, the households who benefit from them, and the taxpayers who fund them.
