New strains to lift maize yields

By applying more advancedtechnology, Vietnamese maize farmers could boost yields by 50 percentby 2020 and reduce money spent on imports, Syngenta representative PeterPickering said at a recent meeting with Vietnamese agriculturalleaders.

The Swiss company, a global leader in thefield of crop protection and agricultural biotechnology, launched aprogramme last year to transfer maize cultivation technology to farmersin Vietnam 's key corn growing areas. These include the northernmountainous area, the Central Highlands and the Red River Delta.The company also supplied seeds of a new hybrid variety to these areas.

Pickering said initial results wereencouraging, adding that he hopes the maize varieties, which areresistant to herbicide and corn borers, will be approved by theGovernment for commercial production.

In addition togood seeds, technical advances are necessary to increase yields, DeputyMinister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Quoc Doanh said.

For this autumn-winter crop, the company worked with Van NamAgricultural Co-operative to provide farms with hybrid maize seeds aswell as pest management solutions to improve yield.

The Asia-Pacific region has the largest corn growing area, butproductivity is often low. In Vietnam , maize fields have an averageyield of 4.3 tonnes per ha. The country has to import 9 million tonnesof maize for feed production annually.

According to predictions,more than 1 billion USD will be spent to import about 4.5 milliontonnes of corn from now until the end of this year. Last year, thecountry spent more than 4 billion USD on agricultural materialimports.-VNA