Good news for rice in Colombia: industry achieved new variety offers less weeds and more resistance against pests

Less than seven years before U.S. rice can enter the country without limit and with zero tariffs, due to the Free Trade Agreement in force between the two countries, the sector of rice in Colombia is preparing to compete with the level of U.S. production and the heavy subsidies received by farmers in that northern country.

Among the advances developed by the sector of rice in Colombia, the latest variety of rice seed generated by Semillano, called “Grandiosa”, stands out.

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This variety has proven to be stronger against pests and diseases that attack the rice plant, a vital characteristic that can boost the grain’s productivity in Colombia’s fields.

In addition to the benefits for the producers of rice in Colombia, the Grandiosa variety has shown very good results in the kitchen.

We spoke with the general manager of Semillano, Dr. Eduardo Villota, who delved into the advantages of this new variety that a few months ago was launched on the market and that has generated the company to obtain the breeder’s rights, as they are called the benefits of who discovers or generates a new plant variety.

Below, we transcribe part of the interview, which can be found in full in the video at the top of the page.

New variety of rice in Colombia

What are the benefits of Grandiosa, the new rice variety, and what aspects motivated you to develop it?

The rice variety we created is Grandiosa and its main characteristics are greater tolerance to diseases and pests. This property allows the farmer to have great benefits from the harvest because he will have to face less diseases and, therefore, less worries in his crop.

Likewise, we have found that this variety is of high quality for the milling industry because its behavior in the industry is excellent; as it also happens in the kitchen, with a loose rice on the plate.

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For these reasons, we consider Grandiosa to be an exceptional variety, which already has the approval of governmental entities for the departments of Meta and Casanare.

Tell us about the research process for these new varieties of rice in Colombia and how it results in a new rice seed.

The process to generate a new seed of rice in Colombia is quite long. For this, in Semillano we start to make the crosses of the varieties, that is, a mixture of a male with a female.

Then we make a hybridization, starting with F1 to F5 or F6. After doing all this purification, we managed to get exceptional characteristics such as this Grandiosa variety, which we started to multiply. In that course we have taken about seven years.

Now, if you ask me about the investment, the investment is very high because it is seven years maintaining a research program. We estimate that our company invested around one billion pesos a year, so we are talking about seven to eight billion pesos for a given variety.

Let’s talk a little bit about the intellectual property of this seed. You start from a seed to make another one of better quality. Does this modification generate plant breeders’ rights for you?

Yes, we have submitted this variety for approval to the Colombian Agricultural Institute (ICA), which is the authority in Colombia.

The ICA spent two semesters doing the corresponding analysis, managed to get all the information and approved this variety for the departments of Meta and Casanare.

It has also given us protection to this plant variety directly for 20 years, which means that at this moment we are doing all the corresponding procedures so that this variety is fully protected for the years that correspond to us as breeders of this new rice variety.

Does this mean that you are the sole owners of this rice variety in the whole world?

That is correct. Therefore, we are asking our rice farmer, our friend, to visit us directly in the different seed-producing plants, to come back to us, because if he gets this variety from another farmer, he will not find the true seed variety.

He has to go back to the source to get the variety that offers the absence of weeds, high germination percentage and greater vigor. All this is achieved thanks to the effort we make permanently.

The rice sector in Colombia has been making headlines lately because of the difficulties it is going through. Is it worth innovating and insisting on these crops and these new seeds in Colombia?

The problems we rice growers have had at the moment are related to a bit of misunderstanding, in the sense that we are asking that, for this 2023 harvest, in the second semester, we comply with the rice storage subsidy, as has been implemented since the liquidation of Idema [Instituto de Mercadeo Agropecuario] in 1997, the institute that used to buy our harvests.

The storage subsidy replaces Idema and for that reason rice producers in Colombia have been asking for this subsidy. I understand that they gave a small allocation and that the Minister of Agriculture says that she wants to eliminate this system because she wants to return to the previous systems.

By the way, it seems that in the presidency of Dr. Petro and his Minister of Agriculture, Jhenifer Mojica, they want to revive Idema to buy back the crops.

But let’s go back to the issue of seeds. What we want is that the farmer, when he buys a seed, has the full conviction that he is buying good quality, good germination, good vegetative development process, and that he is going to get better yields and a higher profit.

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