SL Agritech to ship hybrid rice seeds to Vietnam

MANILA, Philippines - SL Agritech Corp. is scheduled to ship early this year 600 metric tons (MT) of hybrid rice seeds to Vietnam. Its succeeding shipments to that country will be 1,000 MT in 2013; 1,500 MT in 2014; and 2,500 MT in 2015.

Henry Lim, SL Agritech chairman and chief executive officer (CEO), said by the end of 2015, Vietnam ‘s target area that will be planted to hybrid rice will be 14,000 hectares.

 SL Agritech’s hybrid rice seeds shipment to Vietnam last year totaled 240 MT. This month, it is sending another 60 MT to that country to complete its seeds delivery for 2011 to 300 MT.

Lim said the rice seeds shipments are in pursuant to the 2010 agreement entered into by his firm and Dai Thanh Agritech Seed Co. of Vietnam.

Vietnam, one of the world’s biggest rice producers where the Philippines has been importing billions of pesos worth of rice the past many years, is the seventh Asian country to adopt SL Agritech’s hybrid rice seed technology.

“Ang Vietnam ay pang-pito ng bansa sa Asya na gumagamit na ng aming hybrid rice technology. Ang iba ay ang Cambodia , Myanmar (formerly Burma ), Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, at Malaysia.” Lim said.

“If the government will not act now and adapt the hybrid rice technology, it will not be surprising later for us to be importing the cereal from these same countries,” he said.

The continuous use of inbred rice variety which produces only about 75 to 80 cavans per hectare as compared to hybrid rice production which averages 250 to 260 cavans per hectare, “will not bring us to the rice sufficiency level that we need. It will necessitate an expansion of our available rice land which we no longer have,” he said.

Lim said Asian countries are cultivating a total of 52 million hectares of rice land. They are, he said, Indonesia, which has 11 million hectares; Bangladesh, 10 million; Vietnam, seven’ and Myanmar, six; while the Philippines is cultivating only three million hectares of rice lands. China and India have 42 and 32 million hectares, respectively.

Nigeria, considered the most populated country in Africa with 140 million people, has likewise been adopting SL Agritech’s hybrid rice technology.

Dr. Weijun, SL Agritech vice president for external affairs and former rice scientist of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), was in Vietnam recently to observe rice production.

He reported that with intermediate plant height, big panicle and medium maturity, not to mention, he said, its good tolerance against pest and disease, “the SL-8H hybrid rice variety is gaining wide acceptability from local farmers.”