Philippines agri firm exporting more hybrid seeds to Bangladesh

Philippine firm SL Agritech Corp. is shipping more hybrid rice seeds to Bangladesh to help this country maintain self-sufficiency in cereals.

Officials of SLAC met with those of state-owned Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corp. (BADC) on Friday and agreed that more parental seeds of SL Agritech’s SL-8H variety would be exported to Bangladesh to produce first-generation (F-1) seeds that would be distributed to farmers who will then produce table rice.

BADC wants to expand SL-8H production to 5,000 tons of F-1 seeds by 2014 from the present 700 tons.

SL Agritech chair and CEO Henry Lim Bon Liong told reporters after the meeting that Bangladesh had started SL-8H production in 2009 at just 69 tons. This expanded to 400 tons in 2010 and 700 tons in 2011. Lim said SL Agritech was getting royalties from the SL-8H seed production in Bangladesh and other countries.

BADC chair S.M. Nazmul Islam, also additional secretary (equivalent to undersecretary) of the Bangladesh Ministry of Agriculture, said farmers had reported high yields from SL-8H, prompting the Bangladesh government to want to expand production of the hybrid variety.

“Bangladesh is a small country, with just half the Philippines’ area, but a population of 160 million, which is more than the population of the Philippines. With our population growing every year, and faced with climate change, we need more hybrid rice production to maintain food sufficiency,” Islam said.

Bangladesh Ministry of Agriculture additional secretary Quazi Akhtar Hossain said his country was able to produce 35 million tons of cereal (rice, corn, and wheat) per year. Bangladesh attained self-sufficiency in cereals production in 2000, he said.

The officials from Bangladesh said that in their country, open pollinated varieties yielded only 5 to 6 tons of table rice per hectare while hybrid varieties imported by private companies were yielding 8 tons per hectare. SL-8H, which BADC imports to sell to farmers at a “no profit, no loss” basis, yields 12 tons per hectare.

Besides Bangladesh, SL Agritech has been exporting hybrid rice seeds to Indonesia and Vietnam, which is the world’s No. 2 rice exporter after Thailand.