Monsanto’s mobile technology unit rolled into Lincoln Tuesday to showcase company plans to use genetic engineering to double the yield of corn and other crops between 2005 and 2030.

The corn goal is a consistent 300 bushels per acre. The average Nebraska yield in 2008 was 163 bushels per acre.

Bill Kosinski, an agricultural educator from the seed giant’s St. Louis headquarters, was on duty in a parking lot on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s East Campus to try to turn scientific complexities into simpler terms for tour groups during a three-day stop.

“The idea behind the unit is to go out into the heartland and show farmers the science behind the technology,” Kosinski said, “which we believe today will make them more productive, more efficient and more profitable on their farm.”

The technology unit is a 53-foot-long, 1,000-square-foot interactive display focusing on seed breeding, biotechnology, and new product development.

Some of what was inside definitely belonged in the high-tech mold. That includes a robotic arm encased in glass that grabbed trays full of plant tissue samples, placed them under analytic equipment, and then moved them onto the done pile.

It also includes a magnetic resonance imaging machine adapted from medical settings, where it’s used to look inside the human body. Monsanto uses it to look inside seed and draw sound conclusions about promising genes.

“We want the best genes in the best seed,” Kosinksi said.

Some of the visual parts of the science-on-wheels approach were entirely familiar. A shotgun and rifle mounted on one wall were meant to drive home a message about moving beyond a scatter gun to precise placement of genetic traits that can make crops resistant to insects.

One recent research emphasis at Monsanto is in genetically enhancing seed to make it drought resistant. Kosinki expects that to be in the corn market somewhere between 2012 and 2015 and in soybeans at some point after that.

The company is also intent on besting the competition in food uses from palm oil, which is high in saturated fats, with soybean oil, which isn’t. And its scientists are working on a soy oil for salad dressing and other food products that has the same heart-friendly traits as fish oil without the fishy taste.

Monsanto has partnered with researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to make crops resistant to dicamba, the active ingredient in a grouping of weed-killing chemicals. As is the case with the glyphosate in Roundup, a fixture in weed control since the 1970s, genetically engineered resistance allows farmers to get rid of the weeds without harming the crop.

The more recently adapted dicamba can be used to attack weeds that have shown signs of resistance to glyphosate.

Chuck Francis, a crop specialist and sustainable-agriculture advocate at UNL, is not a fan of relying heavily on one chemical as a weed solution. That, said Francis, is how weed resistance develops.

“I think, really, the key thing, any time you use one strategy, particularly one chemical over and over again, is you’re going to create weed resistance,” Francis said.

From Francis’ vantage point, researchers should be working hard to design a diversified cropping system “where you don’t have that problem to begin with. And that’s what the organic folks are trying to do.”

Reach Art Hovey at 473-7223 or at ahovey@journalstar.com