Bioceres Crop Solutions announces regulatory approval of drought tolerant HB4^® Wheat by Brazil’s CTNBio

Date:11-12-2021

Bioceres Crop Solutions Corp. (“Bioceres”) (NASDAQ: BIOX), a fully integrated global provider of crop productivity solutions designed to enable the transition of agriculture towards carbon neutrality, has received import approval of the Company’s HB4 Wheat flour for animal and human consumption from Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply.

After a rigorous review process that included the use of OMICS datasets to support the scientific safety evaluation of HB4 Wheat, the Brazilian National Biosafety Commission (CTNBio) – an agency that encompasses recognized scientists and diverse specialists – unanimously endorsed biosafety conditions for flour obtained from HB4 Wheat. The comprehensive regulatory process involved the development of state-of-the-art methodologies by Bioceres, to address allergenic risk concerns and demonstrate the safety equivalence of HB4 wheat to its conventional counterpart.

This approval is a major step towards building climate resilient agriculture systems that use wheat as a key component for crop rotation. Wheat is a key staple for billions of people around the globe, and a crop, that has remained orphan in the sphere of biotechnology despite being planted in 200 million hectares globally. In October of 2020, Argentina granted first approval of HB4 Wheat ‘event’ for growth and consumption. The commercialization of HB4 wheat in Argentina has been subject to Brazilian approval, as Brazil is the main export market for Argentinean wheat production. Argentina is the largest wheat producing country in the southern cone resulting in an annual opportunity of 6-8 million hectares.

Meaningful resources and efforts have backed this significant milestone, which could not have been accomplished without the continued support of Bioceres partner Tropical Melhoramento & Genética, a Brazilian partner who lead the regulatory filings with CTNBio and Florimond Desprez, the co-developer of HB4 Wheat and a Bioceres partner in Trigall Genetics, the trust of our shareholders, and the strong commitment of the teams involved in the entire research, development and regulatory processes.

Bioceres has been scaling-up HB4 Wheat inventories through its identity-preserved HB4 Program and is currently harvesting 55,000 hectares of the crop. Considering inventory availability for next planting season and the significance of this regulatory milestone regarding its commercial prospects, the Company will update the investors community with 2022 acreage projections and business opportunity in its next earnings call.