US Agriseeds has established a rice breeding station in the Philippines, hoping to become a major player in the country’s push to become completely self-sufficient in rice after 2013.
The seeds supplier said Thursday in a statement that it wants to distribute hybrid rice seeds to farmers looking for planting stock for the rainy season, which runs from June to December.
The breeding station of US Agriseeds, through local subsidiary SeedWorks Philippines Inc. (SPI), covers four to five hectares in Muñoz, Nueva Ecija. A breeding station is where parent lines are developed for the desired superior traits like disease resistance.
The company sees brisk demand growth not only in the Philippines, which has a yearly 2 percent population growth, but in bigger rice-consuming South East Asian countries, particularly Indonesia.
“We’re fairly new in Southeast Asia, but we see a big opportunity because rice is mainly produced in Asia, and it is a good market if you put together Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam,” said US AGriseeds general manager-South East Asia Carlos Miguel L. Saplala.
The company said it was bent on sustaining investments in the Philippines.
“Our investment here has been continuous since the end of 2006 toward 2007. We’re continuing to pour investment because you don’t really recover investments in seeds over a short period of time. From the time you start breeding for a new hybrid today to the time that the hybrid will see the market, it takes at least six years,” Saplala said.
US Agriseeds is specifically targeting wet season cropping for the variety it developed to be tolerant to bacterial leaf blight (BLB), an infestation problem that perennially causes farmers to abstain from hybrid rice use during the wet season.