Market Trends of Brazil Seed Treatment Industry
Rising Adoption of GM Seeds
Brazil, one of the largest food baskets in the world, has registered a steep rise in the adoption of genetically modified crops, with the total area under transgenic crops amounting to 50.2 million hectares in 2017, as revealed in a study by International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA). Cotton, soybean, and corn are the major biotech crops prevalent in Brazil. The area under GM crops further rose by 1.1 million hectares in 2018, thereby, leaving a wider scope for the seed treatment market to capture potential space in the expansion in treating seeds on a massive scale. For instance, Bayer would reportedly launch the INTACTA 2 XTEND seed technology, which allows the genetically modified soybeans to be treated with dicamba without being harmed, in Brazil during the 2021-2022 cropping season. As a result, the surging area under genetically engineered seeds in Brazil is anticipated to lead to rapid penetration of seed treatment products, thereby, driving the market, during the forecast period.
Increasing Production of Soybean
The production of Soybean, one of the largest growing crops in Brazil, increased immensely from 86,760.5 thousand metric tons in 2014 to 117,887.6 thousand metric tons in 2018. The area harvested also increased by 12% from 30,273.7 thousand hectares in 2014 to 34,771.6 thousand hectares in 2018. Further, a competitive Real driven by the devaluation of the currency against the US Dollar, is expected to boost soybean prices by almost 10% in the export market, further encouraging farmers to raise the level of production in the country. Moreover, a growing need for high-quality domestic ingredients for livestock feed in the country is anticipated to play a vital role in driving soybean production. These factors are expected to be beneficial for the growth of the seed treatment industry in the future. Owing to the demand, BASF launched Bomvoro, an efficient solution for the treatment of soybean seeds, in Brazil, in 2018.
