Vietnam adopts SL Agritech hybrid tech

MANILA, Philippines –  Vietnam, one the world’s richest agricultural regions and the world’s seventh largest consumer of rice, will be the 4th Asian country to adopt the hybrid rice technology of SL Agritech Corp., a Makati City-based firm engaged in the production of hybrid rice seeds.

Under a partnership agreement signed recently with SL Agritech, Vietnam will become a production site for SL Agritech’s SL-8H super hybrid rice seeds variety. The company also has production sites in Indonesia, Bangladesh and Malaysia. 

Henry Lim, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of SL Agritech Corp., said the transaction was pursuant to the agreement entered into by his firm and Dai Thanh Agritech Seed Co. of Vietnam.

The accord calls for SL Agritech to initially ship early next year, 60 tons of its SL-8H super hybrid rice seeds to Vietnam. The second shipment of 300 tons will be a year later, then another 500 until they reach 2,000 tons.

Weijun Xu, SL Agritech vice president for external affairs, was in Vietnam recently to observe rice production practices of Vietnamese farmers. He reported that with intermediate plant height, big panicle and medium maturity, not to mention its good tolerance against pest and diseases, “SL-8H super hybrid rice is gaining wide acceptability from local farmers.”

Weijun, a former rice scientist of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), said without a doubt that Vietnam, also the world’s second largest rice exporter, “is a big market for SL-8H super hybrid rice seeds in the near future.”

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

Lim said “before they (Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Nigeria and Vietnam) signed agreements with us to adopt our hybrid rice technology and become our production sites for our SL-8H hybrid seeds, they first conducted several field trials and the results, as they had reported to us, ‘were very encouraging.’”

Nigeria, considered the most populated country in Africa with 140 million people, has likewise shown its interest to adopt the SL Agritech rice technology when it signed early this year an agreement with the firm for the supply of its high-yielding SL-8H super hybrid rice seeds variety.

Cambodia and Burma have earlier sent feelers signifying their intention to also use the same technology of SL Agritech to meet their growing demand for rice.

Indonesia, with a population of 230 million and one of the world’s biggest rice-consuming countries, envisions to plant up to five million hectares of hybrid rice in the next five years, Lim said.