President Alberto Fernández held a meeting at Casa Rosada with Argentine scientist Raquel Chan, who developed, together with a team from the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (Conicet), drought-tolerant HB4 soybeans.
This crop was recently approved by the Ministry of Agriculture of the People’s Republic of China, through a license presented by the Argentine company Bioceres, which formed a “successful” public-private alliance, the Presidency reported in a statement.
The president, who was accompanied by the ministers of Science, Technology and Innovation, Daniel Filmus; and Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries, Julián Domínguez; congratulated the scientist who directs the Institute of Agrobiotechnology of the Litoral, which depends on Conicet and the National University of the Litoral, and whose specialized work team developed the first transgenic technology made entirely in Argentina, called HB4.
This technology allows plants to have a higher tolerance in periods of drought and a much higher yield and, in this way, improves the ability of plants to adapt to stress situations, without affecting their productivity.
After the meeting, Filmus highlighted the achievement as “a virtuous example of public-private articulation, which also demonstrates the importance of promoting investment in Science and Technology in the face of those voices that recommend not doing so and administrations that not long ago even reduced”.
In this sense, the minister highlighted the relevance of these advances to incorporate added value to the production of raw materials.
“It translates as the success of a thriving industry that allows adding value and generating jobs where the raw materials are, in order to expand the productive capacity of the provinces, which in general, as in the case of soybeans, does not run out only in cultivation, but in the industry, this thriving industry that I’m talking about,” he concluded.
For his part, Chan praised “the very pleasant meeting” he had with the President and stressed that the approval of the crop “has a symbolic impact, on the one hand, since it involves Argentine technology that is exported abroad, and, on the other hand, , the amount of foreign currency that can enter the country”.
The approval process for the Argentine development was presented to China in 2016 and, with the recent resolution that authorized cultivation, the Asian country joins the United States, Brazil, Paraguay and Canada, which have already approved the seed.
Together these countries account for approximately 85 percent of global soybean production.
