(Radio Iowa) – Governor Kim Reynolds spent about a third of the month of September on a trade mission in India. Reynolds says the groundwork for her meetings was laid decades ago by the Iowa native who won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his research that improved wheat and rice yields.

Borlaug took a wheat variety he’d developed to India in the mid-1960s and increased wheat production there by 60 percent.*

Reynolds met with India’s Secretary of Agriculture as well as the country’s Minister for Food Processing and Minister of Commerce. Iowa Corn Growers President Stu Swanson says a memorandum of agreement was signed to promote discussions between Iowa’s and India’s feed sectors.

An Iowa-based start-up company called “Power Pollen” also signed a letter of agreement with an India company called V-R-N Seed that does business in the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia. Power Pollen, which is based in Ames, has developed a process for collecting pollen, storing it and then applying it to fields to increase production of rice, wheat and corn seeds.