The US Supreme Court on Tuesday declined an appeal from Bayer-owned Monsanto that aimed to challenge thousands of lawsuits claiming its weedkiller Roundup causes cancer -- a potentially costly ruling. The high court did not explain its decision not to take the case, which left intact a $25 million ruling in favor of a California man who alleged he developed cancer after using the chemical for years. The decision marks a major blow to the German conglomerate's legal fight against some 31,000 Roundup-related cases. "Bayer respectfully disagrees with the Supreme Court's decision," the company said in a statement. "The company believes that the decision undermines the ability of companies to rely on official actions taken by expert regulatory agencies," it added, referring to a 2020 federal finding that Roundup's active ingredient is not risky.

Artificial intelligence already is making strides in the development of new drugs, and now the pesticide industry wants in on the action. Switzerland's Syngenta has teamed up with Insilico Medicine to use its deep-learning tools to produce sustainable weedkillers. As well as taking on some of the early-stage work traditionally conducted in a lab, AI could design molecules used in crop-protection tools that are more sustainable and environmentally friendly, the companies said last week. AI is among new methods emerging as environmental and health concerns spur a quest for sustainable alternatives to traditional pesticides used by farmers. Demand also is being supported by regulatory pressures and lawsuits, most notably Bayer's $11 billion settlement deal over claims its long-used glyphosate herbicide causes cancer.

Farmers may soon have an alternative to spraying their fields with chemicals, as Small Robot Company and RootWave, two UK-based agritech startups, today announced a partnership to develop a high-precision robot that can kill weeds with a zap of electricity. Small Robot has already developed a series of small, agricultural robots, called Tom, Dick and Harry, which can automate some of the routine tasks of farming. Tom, a scouting robot similar to the Mars Rover, for example, uses computer vision to map the weeds in a field, covering about 20 hectares a day. Dick, a weeding robot, can already remove unwanted plants with either a micro-dose of pesticide or by physically crushing them, but the next stage will be to combine this with technology from RootWave, which destroys weeds by with an electric current, essentially boiling them from the inside out. "Farmers are really desperate for an alternative to the chemical control of weeds," says Sam Watson Jones, the chief executive of Small Robot Company.

BOGOTÁ, Colombia--With drug crops booming, Colombia's police are busily testing whether drones carrying defoliants can efficiently kill the leaf used to make cocaine and win the support of Trump administration officials concerned about this country's growing capacity to supply drugs to American consumers. Antidrug officials here say that in recent weeks they have deployed 10 drones, each weighing 50 pounds when loaded with herbicide, in southwest Nariño province. The small, remotely guided aircraft destroyed hundreds of acres of coca in a first round of tests, said police and the company contracted by the government to supply the drones. Colombia's new president, Iván Duque, said that he wants some kind of aerial fumigation of coca fields, which expanded 160% to 516,000 acres from 2012 to 2017, the White House reported in June. But he prefers drones over planes to drop the herbicide, which would mitigate damage to legal crops growing adjacent to coca fields.

YVERDON-LES-BAINS, Switzerland/CHICAGO (Reuters) - In a field of sugar beet in Switzerland, a solar-powered robot that looks like a table on wheels scans the rows of crops with its camera, identifies weeds and zaps them with jets of blue liquid from its mechanical tentacles. Undergoing final tests before the liquid is replaced with weedkiller, the Swiss robot is one of new breed of AI weeders that investors say could disrupt the $100 billion pesticides and seeds industry by reducing the need for universal herbicides and the genetically modified (GM) crops that tolerate them. Dominated by companies such as Bayer, DowDuPont, BASF and Syngenta, the industry is bracing for the impact of digital agricultural technology and some firms are already adapting their business models. Herbicide sales are worth $26 billion a year and account for 46 percent of pesticides revenue overall while 90 percent of GM seeds have some herbicide tolerance built in, according to market researcher Phillips McDougall. "Some of the profit pools that are now in the hands of the big agrochemical companies will shift, partly to the farmer and partly to the equipment manufacturers," said Cedric Lecamp, who runs the $1 billion Pictet-Nutrition fund that invests in companies along the food supply chain.

In a field of sugar beet in Switzerland, a solar-powered robot that looks like a table on wheels scans the rows of crops with its camera, identifies weeds and zaps them with jets of blue liquid from its mechanical tentacles. Undergoing final tests before the liquid is replaced with weedkiller, the Swiss robot is one of new breed of AI weeders that investors say could disrupt the $100billion pesticides and seeds industry by reducing the need for universal herbicides and the genetically modified (GM) crops that tolerate them. Dominated by companies such as Bayer, DowDuPont, BASF and Syngenta, the industry is bracing for the impact of digital agricultural technology and some firms are already adapting their business models. Herbicide sales are worth $26billion a year and account for 46 percent of pesticides revenue overall while 90 percent of GM seeds have some herbicide tolerance built in, according to market researcher Phillips McDougall. 'Some of the profit pools that are now in the hands of the big agrochemical companies will shift, partly to the farmer and partly to the equipment manufacturers,' said Cedric Lecamp, who runs the $1billion Pictet-Nutrition fund that invests in companies along the food supply chain.

YVERDON-LES-BAINS, Switzerland/CHICAGO: In a field of sugar beet in Switzerland, a solar-powered robot that looks like a table on wheels scans the rows of crops with its camera, identifies weeds and zaps them with jets of blue liquid from its mechanical tentacles. Undergoing final tests before the liquid is replaced with weedkiller, the Swiss robot is one of new breed of AI weeders that investors say could disrupt the US$100 billion pesticides and seeds industry by reducing the need for universal herbicides and the genetically modified (GM) crops that tolerate them. Dominated by companies such as Bayer, DowDuPont, BASF and Syngenta, the industry is bracing for the impact of digital agricultural technology and some firms are already adapting their business models. Herbicide sales are worth US$26 billion a year and account for 46 percent of pesticides revenue overall while 90 percent of GM seeds have some herbicide tolerance built in, according to market researcher Phillips McDougall. "Some of the profit pools that are now in the hands of the big agrochemical companies will shift, partly to the farmer and partly to the equipment manufacturers," said Cedric Lecamp, who runs the US$1 billion Pictet-Nutrition fund that invests in companies along the food supply chain.