The Transformation of Brazilian Tropical Agriculture – Interview with Silvia Massruhá, President of Embrapa

In the year it completed half a century of activities a woman heads the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) for the first time. An Embrapa employee since 1989, Silvia Massruhá holds a Ph.D. in Applied Computing from the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe). In this interview with AgroPages, she talks about the challenges and opportunities ahead for her management at Embrapa and the new technologies reaching the market with the participation of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation.

Silvia Massruhá, President of Embrapa

What does Embrapa represent for agriculture in these 50 years of activity?

Over the past 50 years, Brazil has gone from being an importer and dependent on food to a major global producer and exporter of food and fiber, which has elevated the country to the category of one of the world's biggest players in food production. Embrapa was largely responsible for this achievement, as many of the technologies that leveraged agricultural production in the country are credited to Embrapa. When revisiting the past, important achievements stand out, such as the tropicalization of Cerrado soils, which brought a real economic revolution to the biome. Applied scientific knowledge promoted the transformation of Cerrado's infertile soils into arable and highly productive areas. The continuity of this conquest today is reflected in Trigo Tropical.

Embrapa recently announced an agreement with the US to develop local input production. What will this project look like, and what results are expected?

During the 50th-anniversary ceremony, a cooperation agreement was signed for the implementation of the Research and Efficiency for Fertilizer Production project: a partnership between Embrapa, the University of Florida, and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The resources are around US$4 million, $1 million for each research project to be conducted in three years.

Among the research topics are the use of precision agriculture, big data, and artificial intelligence to obtain a more efficient distribution of nutrients applied to crops and soil management; the development and evaluation of new biological products to improve soil physical functions; development and evaluation of new formulations and sources of fertilizers to replace or reduce dependence on traditional sources of NPK, such as higher efficiency and organomineral fertilizers, and biostimulants for root growth; determining ways to better use existing nutrient sources, such as legume cover crops, used as alternatives to fertilizers, and developing new crop varieties that use soil nutrients more efficiently.

We hope that this set of projects will contribute to the world's advancement of scientific knowledge and reduce Brazil's external dependence on chemical inputs, such as pesticides and fertilizers.

How does Embrapa see the evolution and growth of bioinputs in Brazil?

Brazil is the largest producer of bioinputs and also the one that uses it the most, all with the support of agricultural research. Increasingly common in the field, bioinputs reduce chemical applications, generate savings, circumvent non-tariff barriers, enable organic production, and contribute to environmentally more sustainable agriculture.

In Brazil, the bioinput market has been growing at rates of 50% a year, against a global average of 15%, according to research by Croplife. And it is not about replacing chemical pesticides but a complementary strategy within the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) that prevents resistance to pesticides while reducing costs and the number of applications.

As for biostimulants (bacteria, fungi, acids, extracts, biopolymers, and inorganic compounds), around 50% of Brazilian producers already make use of these resources, against 28% of farmers in the European Union, 23% in China, 16% in the United States, 11% in Argentina, 9% in Canada and 3% in India. Leadership is also significant in the use of biofertilizers (organic fertilizers): 36% of Brazilian producers use it, against 25% of Europeans, 22% of Chinese, 12% of Americans, 11% of Indians, 7% of Canadians and 6% of Argentines (source: McKinsey). I emphasize that Embrapa remains at the forefront of agricultural research when the topic is bio-input.

What products are reaching the market with Embrapa's participation?

In recent years, in partnership with private companies, we have placed important bioproducts on the market, such as the one we recently launched on the company's 50th anniversary: the bioinsecticide Lalguard Java. The result of a public-private partnership between Embrapa and the company Lallemand Plant Care, the bioproduct is a sustainable alternative for controlling the whitefly, an insect responsible for direct and indirect damage to more than 40 crops in Brazil, including soybeans, cotton, beans, potatoes, melon, watermelon, among others.

Other important examples of the company's contribution to the bioinput market: Biomaphos, a bioproduct that allows the natural fixation of phosphate in plants. 100% national technology, increased productivity by around 12 bags per hectare in corn plantations. In soybean crops treated with the input, the average productivity jumped from 67.2 bags per hectare to 71.6 bags.

Auras is a microorganisms capable of hydrating plant roots, making them respond better to water scarcity. It can reduce the effects caused by prolonged droughts in corn crops, minimize risks, and increase production resilience to climate change.

Acera is a bioproduct to control fall armyworm in soybean, corn, and cotton crops, among others. Monkey pepper essential oil, an abundant plant in the Amazon, is used to control citrus pests.

Omsugo Eco (sold by the multinational Corteva Agriscience) increased in productivity, according to Embrapa data, by 20% with the first phosphorus-solubilizing inoculant developed in the country, with validated agronomic recommendations for sugarcane cultivation).

Therefore, we have as one of our priorities the continuity of research with bioinputs, contributing so that more and more rural producers adopt the technologies developed by Embrapa.