The fourth largest wheat exporter in the world, Argentina is the first country in the world to approve the production and marketing of a variety of transgenic wheat, a new market, however, subject to the approval of the main importer, Brazil. “This is the first approval in the world” for a genetically modified organism (GMO) of wheat, whose particularity is to be tolerant to drought, the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research of Argentina (Conicet) said in a statement Thursday (October 8th).
But “To be marketed in Argentina, it must be approved by Brazil, the main and historical market for Argentine wheat”, specifies the organization which depends on the government. In 2019, 45% of the 11.3 million tonnes of wheat exported by Argentina were sold to Brazil. The other main markets are Indonesia, Chile and Kenya.
Developed by a French company
The development of this drought-resistant wheat is the fruit of a public-private collaboration of more than fifteen years between the Argentinian company Bioceres and a research group from the National University of Litoral (UNL). The latter, led by Dr. Raquel Chan, succeeded in isolating a drought-resistant gene to inoculate it in wheat, soybeans or corn. Until now, research has come up against the complexity of the wheat genome.
“The Argentinian Ministry of Agriculture has approved wheat incorporating our company’s HB4 technology for production and consumption”, welcomes in a statement Bioceres, which underlines that Argentina thus becomes the “First country in the world” to adopt this technology.
The HB4 wheat varieties are developed by Trigall Genetics, a joint venture between Bioceres and the French company Florimond Desprez, one of the world leaders in wheat genetics. Established in the north of France, the Florimond Desprez group (1,155 employees) presents itself as “Breeder of varieties and producer of seeds meeting the expectations of the field crops sector”.
It is present in 65 countries and has 35 subsidiaries abroad, including one in Argentina since 2012. In production batches and field trials carried out over the past ten years, HB4 wheat varieties have shown improvement. yield of 20% on average in case of drought.
“Non-acceptance of consumers”
“We must now convince the world that this is very good and be able to generate markets for this wheat which represents a technological evolution”, said the director general of Bioceres, Federico Trucco, in the columns of the Argentinian daily Clarin.
“The first to be convinced must be Brazil”, he added, estimating “The arduous task”, as was, according to him, the obtaining of this marketing authorization. The latter happened “Three years after having obtained the approvals of Conabia [Commission nationale consultative sur la biotechnologie agricole] and Senasa [Service national de la santé agroalimentaire] “.
Experts, members of the National Seed Institute, however expressed their concern about this marketing approval. They pointed out in a column on Thursday that no country was approving the use of transgenic wheat varieties. “Due to the non-acceptance by local and / or foreign consumers of products made from transgenic crops and the difficulty of separating the production of GMOs and that of non-GMOs”.
They also made it known that the possible approval by the Brazilian government “Does not guarantee that mills, bakeries and individual consumers will agree to buy our GMO wheat, and if they do, there is no guarantee that they will do so without price reduction”.
According to them, this GMO “Is a relevant scientific breakthrough and could be an important contribution for soybeans, corn and other crops, but so far not for wheat”. For Agritel, a French company expert in agricultural market strategies, Argentina takes “The risk of seeing consumers oppose this type of product” and therefore lose market share.
