Monsanto company, the "new Monsanto", focused on four key agricultural crops—soybeans, maize, wheat and cotton. Monsanto agreed to indemnify Pharmacia against potential liabilities from judgments against Solutia. As a result, the new Monsanto continued to be a party to numerous lawsuits over the prior Monsanto. Pharmacia was bought by Pfizer in 2003.) In 2005 Monsanto acquired Emergent Genetics and its Stoneville and NexGen cotton brands. Emergent was the third largest U.S. cotton seed company, with about 12% of the U.S. market. Monsanto's goal was to obtain "a strategic cotton germplasm and traits platform." Also in 2005, Monsanto purchased Seminis, the California-based
Monsanto in the Texas City Disaster. In 1949, Monsanto acquired American Viscose from Courtaulds. In 1954, Monsanto partnered with German chemical giant Bayer to form Mobay and market polyurethanes in the United States. Monsanto began manufacturing DDT in 1944, along with some 15 other companies. This insecticide was critical to the fight against malaria-transmitting mosquitoes. Due to DDT's toxicity, it was banned in the United States in 1972. In 1977, Monsanto stopped producing PCBs; Congress banned PCB production two years later. In the mid‑1960s, William Standish Knowles and his team invented a way to selectively synthesize enantiomers via asymmetric hydrogenation. This