Buenos Aires (AFP)

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 wheat GMO, whose particularity is to be tolerant to drought, the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research of Argentina said in a statement Thursday (Conicet ).

But "to be marketed in Argentina, it must be approved by Brazil, the main and historic market for Argentinian wheat," says the government body.

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.

The development of this drought-resistant wheat is the result of a public-private collaboration of over 15 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.

But until now, research has come up against the complexity of the wheat genome.

"The Argentine Ministry of Agriculture has approved wheat incorporating the HB4 technology of our company for production and consumption", welcomes in a Bioceres press release which highlights 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 an average yield improvement of 20% under drought conditions.

- "Non-acceptance of consumers" -

"We must now convince the world that it is very good and be able to generate markets for this wheat which represents a technological evolution", declared the managing director of Bioceres, Federico Trucco, in the columns of the Argentinian daily Clarin.

“The first to be convinced must be Brazil”, he added, considering “the difficult task” as it was according to him to obtain this marketing authorization.

The latter came "three years after having obtained the approvals of Conabia (National Advisory Commission on Agricultural Biotechnology) and Senasa (National Agri-Food Health Service)".

Experts, members of the National Seed Institute, however expressed their concern about this marketing approval.

They stressed in a forum Thursday that no country is approving the use of GM wheat varieties "due to the non-acceptance by local and / or foreign consumers of products made from GM crops and the difficulty to separate the production of GMOs and that of non-GMOs ".

They also indicated that eventual approval by the Brazilian government "does not guarantee that mills, bakeries and individual consumers will agree to purchase 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 advance and could be an important contribution for soybeans, corn and other crops, but for the moment 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 losing market share.

© 2020 AFP