Rosario, Argentina
March 3, 2023
Bioceres Crop Solutions Corp. (Bioceres) (NASDAQ: BIOX), a fully integrated global provider of crop productivity solutions designed to enable the transition of agriculture toward carbon neutrality, announced today that CTNBio, the National Biosafety Commission of Brazil´s Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation, has concluded the safety evaluation of HB4 Wheat, providing full approval for commercialization and cultivation in Brazil.
Today’s approval builds on Brazil’s previous approval for food and feed use of HB4 Wheat flour in November 2021. In addition to opening the Brazilian market to the technology, the decision clears the path for commercialization in Argentina through channels other than Bioceres’ identity-preserved HB4 Program.
The approval also enables the acceleration of Bioceres’ collaboration with EMBRAPA (Brazil’s Agricultural Research Corporation) to develop subtropical wheat varieties to increase the supply of local materials in this geography. HB4 Wheat offers the potential for double cropping – rotating wheat with a summer legume – in regions of the country that are currently limited by water availability.
The HB4 technology is a key tool in the adaptation of farming systems to a more extreme climate, having already proven to deliver more than 40% yield increases in environments under severe water stress, based on results from Argentina’s recent drought-affected crop. This approval paves the way for the technology to deliver $15-$20 million in incremental EBITDA by FY24, as previously communicated.
Brazil is the second country where regulatory agencies have cleared HB4 Wheat for cultivation, after Argentina, and completes the approval processes for the company´s wheat target markets in Latin America. Brazil plants 2-3 million hectares of wheat annually and, together, both countries plant 90% of South America’s wheat acreage. HB4 Wheat is also approved for food and feed use in the United States, Colombia, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Nigeria, and for feed use in Indonesia.
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