Hybrid wheat on Syngenta’s pipeline for Indian market

Swiss crop protection products and seeds giant Syngenta has a pipeline of products it plans to launch in India, including hybrid wheat, on which it is currently working.

“We are going to launch a huge number of new products, in the medium term, specifically for the Indian market. In the seed space, we are working on hybrid wheat, which we will also bring into India,” John Ramsay, CEO of Syngenta International AG, told BusinessLine .

The company, which is the only one globally to have hybrid barley, and currently also has rice, corn and vegetables in its hybrid seed portfolio, plans to launch the hybrid wheat first in western Europe, and then bring it to India by 2020.

Pointing out that (fulfilling) world demand for food was going to be dependent on small holders, regions like Asia and Africa – where the level of productivity was low – would impact world food supply. Hybrid wheat could clearly increase productivity by two to three times, he said.

“From a technological point of view, (developing hybrid) wheat is a master challenge because the plant is self pollinated, but we have achieved a breakthrough,” Ramsay said.

The investment on research and developing a new seed was typically around $200 million, he added. For Syngenta, while globally the crop protection products account for around 70 per cent of its turnover, seed business in India is larger, at nearly 40 per cent of total revenues.

“While globally we are growing at a rate of 4 per cent, our India business is growing at more than double that rate,” Ramsay said.

Elaborating on the good growth plan (GGP) initiative Ramsay quipped, “We are now being listened to. NGOs and organisations previously had blinkers,” and added that an audit on these was being conducted by an independent company.

Introduced by Syngenta in September 2013, the GGP is built on six main pillars that include – helping increase average productivity of major crops by 20 per cent without using more land, water or inputs; improving fertility of 10 million hectares of farmland on the brink of degradation; enhancing biodiversity on five million hectares; and enabling 20 million smallholders increase productivity by 50 per cent. In India, under this programme, a network of 44 reference farms and 141 benchmark farms, in 14 States, have been set up to focus on raising productivity of five key crops – rice, cotton, corn, tomato and soybean.

To educate farmers on farming techniques and solutions for specific crops in India, Syngenta has just launched its first Syngenta Learning Centre for farmers at Ahmednagar, in Maharashtra. The company has 25 such centres across the country, and will add 29 more during 2016, including four in Maharashtra.

“We will have over 100 such learning centres over the next three to five years,” said Bipin Solanki, Territory head (South Asia) of Syngenta.

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