Brazilian market has 478 corn seeds‏ options

Brazil had 478 corn cultivars available in its domestic market during the 2013/2014 crop season. There are eleven more options available than the previous season. Of those, 292 are transgenic and 186 are conventional seeds. The data comes from seed producing companies and was obtained by Embrapa Sorgo e Milho (the Sorghum and Corn unit of Brazil's Agricultural Research Company) researchers.

 

The dynamics of renovation of cultivars in the market was maintained as previous years, considering 97 new cultivars (76 GMO and 21 conventional) and 86 (37 transgenic and 49 conventional) cultivars were removed from the market.

 

Researcher Pereira Filho explains that a cultivar can be sold in its conventional form or in several GMO versions. On the other hand, there are cultivars only with GM events, but not with conventional versions.

 

"Thus, among the 478 option in the market, 320 are in fact have different genetic material and the remaining 158 are variations of transgenic events. Of these 320 materials, 186 cultivars are sold under a conventional version that still can be also commercialized with some transgenic event. Other 134 seeds are sold only in GMO versions, not having conventional options," said the researcher.

 

Compared to the previous crop cycle, early cultivars are dominant (66.25%), followed by hyper and super-young (24.37%). Regulars and "semi-early" represent just 9.38% of the options in the market.

 

Besides the cultivars for grain production, there are cultivars for silage production, high moisture corn silage and corn production.