Cooperation between Embrapa and Kaiima will strengthen castor bean crop in Brazil

Embrapa and the Israeli company Kaiima Seeds signed a cooperation agreement for the development of new castor bean cultivars. The objective is to contribute to the expansion of castor bean farming in Brazil by developing high productive performance cultivars, adapting to different farming conditions, and differentiated characteristics such as oil composition, resistance to diseases and shorter crop cycle.

Nair Arriel, deputy head of Research and Development at Embrapa Cotton, explains that both companies will provide genetic material aimed at developing new cultivars that are essential to strengthen the castor bean production chain in Brazil and potentially expand to other countries.

″Embrapa has an important genetic bank to explore and develop new cultivars, technologies created to be used in the semi-arid region, such as the BRS Energia cultivar, which is vastly planted in the region and has a solid possibility of generating new assets. Kaiima Seeds is a genetic and castor seed company that develops innovative hybrids to increase yields in modern farming systems and on a large scale,″ Arriel states.

Kaiima Seeds is a subsidiary of the Israeli company Kaiima Bio-Agritech Ltda. and has been operating in the country since 2017. It has 5 registered hybrids: Tamar, Mia, Kariel, KS 2019 and KS 2030, as well as others under development. ″Cooperation between these two companies in obtaining castor bean cultivars tends to be extremely important for the entire production chain,″ Arriel pinpoints.

We are optimistic about this cooperation. The genetic diversity will bring to the new cultivars, developed by this collaboration, highly important characteristics in the development of the product in Brazil. Castor bean has been an extremely important source of raw materials for biomaterials and biofuels, especially HVO or green diesel, and Brazil has all the technical and agronomic conditions to become a world leader in castor bean production, says Edison Kopacheski, Kaiima’s CEO.

According to Embrapa Cotton researcher Maira Milani, specialist in the genetic breeding of castor beans, the development of new cultivars is essential for the diversification and sustainability of agricultural systems. ″Several factors require the constant development of cultivars, among those is the reduction in the use of crop protection products by the use of cultivars resistant or tolerant to pests and diseases, the need to use them in marginal or degraded areas or in order to reduce the opening of new areas and shorter crop cycle to adapt to different cultivation systems. The diversification of species in agricultural systems is essential both for environmental sustainability, coming from biological risks such as diseases and pests, and for economic benefits, coming from the diversification of sources of income for the grower.″.

Castor bean 

Despite being a traditional activity, castor bean farming in Brazil still has low economic significance, being cultivated mainly by small producers, with low technological investment and low productivity.

″The development of cultivars, which are more productive and more resistant to diseases, tends to boost production by increasing productivity. Moreover, new cultivars and advances in research through technological innovations to complement the production system in the Cerrado, can boost the introduction of castor beans in areas of production of commodities, offering a new option for profitable cultivation that enables the control of common pests and diseases in the production of soybean, corn and cotton crops, such as nematodes,″ Arriel says.

For large growers, castor bean is a crop with potential of integration into different regions and planting windows of the country due to its capacity to adjust to irregular rainfall. ″Brazil has a real possibility of expanding the crop, due to the high demand for the oil, the limitation of production in the main competitor countries, the Brazilian tradition in such production and the favorable scenario of transforming the national industry through sustainable development based on biomass sources,″ the researcher argues.

Castor oil has properties superior to mineral oils, capable of replacing mineral oils in all its uses, but in a sustainable way. ″Currently, castor oil is one of the products that fit in the concept of circular economy, as it is fully recyclable and has low environmental impact,″ Milani says.