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Agribusiness: Synthetic seed project promises to revolutionize sugarcane production

Written by Ruth Rodrigues
Published 22/01/2023 às 22:55
The production of sugarcane from synthetic seeds will make the process even more optimized and agile. The CTC seeks to make a real revolution in national agribusiness with the project, which has been in progress since 2011.
Source: Jet
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The production of sugarcane from synthetic seeds will make the process even more optimized and agile. The CTC seeks to make a real revolution in national agribusiness with the project, which has been in progress since 2011.

Seeking to guarantee even more optimized solutions for the national agribusiness sector, the Sugarcane Technology Center (CTC) continues its project of synthetic sugarcane seeds. The organization is looking for make planting faster, efficient and with a strong increase in productivity. Unlike all the processes used so far, which required a piece of the plant, the research center's initiative produces the seeds in the laboratory.

Synthetic seed project for large-scale sugarcane production is CTC's new bet for Brazilian agribusiness 

Even with the technological advances of recent years, the national agribusiness sector continues to face a great challenge: optimizing the planting of sugarcane.

This is because the high cost of renewing sugarcane fields and the difficulties in adopting new varieties are still relevant problems in this process.

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The plant's current productivity is currently stagnant, since all processes tried so far use a piece of sugarcane for planting.

With that in mind, the CTC has been, since 2011, developing a synthetic seed project for the large-scale production of the product.

Even though it has been in development for more than 10 years, the initiative has only gained strength in the last four years.

There was a validation of the biological part regarding the possibility of producing synthetic seeds of the plant and ending the need to use the species itself in production.

“All alternative planting systems that have been tried to date always used a piece of sugarcane; you have to plant a cane field, take that piece and turn it into a root. So, the idea of ​​this project is to get out of that concept and go for something totally innovative”, highlights research manager Suleiman Hassuani.

Even without a defined deadline, synthetic seeds should start being used in sugarcane production in 2023

The great novelty of the CTC project is the possibility of large-scale production of synthetic sugarcane seeds.

Thus, after the biological validation of this planting stage, the research center set about seeking to optimize this production, as well as guaranteeing the quality of the seeds.

With this advance, the CTC board intensified the bet on the product and initiated actions to allow its commercial launch.

The director of human resources and corporate communication Fabio Hayashida commented on the advances in the project.

He pointed out that, although accelerated, the undertaking still does not have defined deadlines to be launched in the national sugar-energy sector on a commercial basis.

However, even without a final deadline, it is expected that the synthetic sugarcane seeds will reach planting in 2023 at CTC's partner mills.

The specialist added that calling this project “synthetic seeds”, although practical, minimizes the scale of the initiative.

This is because the entire planting and production process of this species will be revolutionized with the use of seeds.

“Currently, planting sugarcane is a war operation that lasts a whole year. To plant 1 hectare, you need 20 tons of pellets”, he says.

With the synthetic seed project, the CTC seeks to make the entire sugarcane production chain even more efficient.

Meet the CTC

CTC — Centro de Tecnologia Canavieira is the global leader in sugarcane science, which seeks constant innovation in the area of ​​genetic improvement, whether through conventional techniques, biotechnology or planting methods.

Ruth Rodrigues

Graduated in Biological Sciences from the State University of Rio Grande do Norte (UERN), she works as a writer and scientific disseminator.

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