Brazil has approved the cultivation, production and commercialization of transgenic wheat from an Argentine company

Members of the Argentine biotechnology and seed company Bioceres have announced that they have finally Brazil approved drought-tolerant HB4 transgenic wheat for cultivation, production and marketing. It is the main importer of wheat from Argentina and the second country in the world, after ours, to authorize the sowing of this type of cereal.

HB4 wheat is a 100% Argentinian development, the result of a public-private collaboration of more than 18 years between the company Bioceres and the research group of the Institute of Agrobiotechnology of the Coast (CONICET-UNL), directed by the doctor. Raquel Chan, responsible for research that leads to development. HB4 wheat varieties incorporated a sunflower gene that increases tolerance to drought conditions, reducing yield losses in the face of water deficit.

Based on Brazil’s decision, the company will seek to advance its process of expansion around the world, with demands for deregulation in other grain-producing countries such as Australia and the United States. As detailed by Bioceres spokespersons on the social network Twitter, the announcement comes after a rigorous review process by the National Biosafety Commission of the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (CTNBio ), which is a Brazilian government institution responsible for analyzing the activities of Genetically Modified Organisms, transgenics and derivatives. In addition, it should be remembered that in November 2021, the import of HB4® wheat flour into this country was approved.

“From 2019 to today, we have been able to rapidly advance HB4® technology into its regulatory status globally. Today, several of the major soybean and wheat producing and importing countries already use this type of grain, which was developed by a team of researchers from Conicet, led by Dr. Raquel Chan, in collaboration with the Universidad Nacional del Litoral and Grupo Bioceres,” they said of the company in a statement.

On the other hand, this week Bioceres presented the yield assessments of transgenic wheat during the month, in the midst of a recent campaign of the cereal affected by deep drought. From the company reported that, “los results fueron contundentes: in average the yield of the trigo HB4® fue un 22% superior frente al tipo de granos de este cereal más utilizado en nuestro país y demostró tener a potencial de hasta un 40%, según the atmosphere”.

In this regard, the Director of the Seeds Unit of Bioceres, Alexander Garcia, pointed out that “It was a very complicated campaign due to the drought. The gene works, there is no doubt. We have information from over 200 data points from the last 3 years. In this campaign of marked drought and frosts that have affected crops, we are very happy to be able to present these positive results. Commercial varieties with HB4® technology were evaluated against their corresponding isoline”.

In addition, the company Bioceres confirmed that it already commercializes the flour obtained from some 50,000 hectares planted with its transgenic variety on the domestic market, through mixtures made in some 25 flour mills. Ezekiel Bosch, a member of the company’s commercial area, said that since last year, Argentine consumers are already eating HB4 transgenic wheat in different foods, since there are some 25 mills that mix the aforementioned modified variety with batches of conventional wheat. “Indeed, we work with more than 25 factories and we sell HB4 without any problem. For many mills we have become a strategic supplier (of wheat) because they know we have quality and we have disaggregated materials,” he said.

All of this, Augustin Forzani, managing partner of Molino Esmeralda, pointed out that “we have not seen any differences between the processing of HB4 wheat and conventional wheat. We are a new factory and we are very determined to innovate. By being able to separate the qualities, Bioceres was able to supply me with wheat in a year when the quality was very poor”. Moreover, he explained that from the first year when the sowing started, they received HB4 wheat, until they accumulated a total of 8,000 tons. They were processed, mixed with other wheats, and he commented that “we did all the testing before separating the wheat and the values ​​were pretty much the same.”

He also specified that “50% of the wheat we received did not have baking quality and 60% did not exceed 22 gluten. That’s why last year we told Bioceres that we were going to buy more, but it had to be 27 or more gluten to make up for how bad it was. We did, and they pretty much saved my year because it was going to be very difficult for me to get the quality wheat I needed, which was a problem for the mills in my area. That’s why it became a strategic client and last season it was the biggest client because I started to receive less from the rest of the producers because they didn’t have quality”.

On the other hand, Bioceres has planted HB4 wheat throughout the agricultural territory since the 2019/2020 campaign, with some 6,000 hectares and then more than 50,000 hectares, through a network of producers and under a preserved identity system. And in this context, yesterday he presented the results of the transgenic cereal in the current agricultural campaign. As noted, there were yield improvements of up to 40%.

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