While in Tucumán a race is underway for a transgenic cane, INTA Famaillá is betting on conventional varieties.

The race to develop a transgenic sugarcane in Tucumán and bring it to the market has two main players: the century-old Estación Experimental Agroindustrial Obispo Colombres (EEAOC) and the private university San Pablo T, driven by the group "Los Balcanes". In pursuit of the relevant state authorizations to launch these materials, both cases promote the development of a sugarcane that, through modifications with genes from other species, manages to maintain productivity, overcoming water crises and higher salt concentration, something that occurs more frequently in Santiago del Estero soils, which is the territory that the sugarcane mills of Tucumán dream of reaching. To achieve this, these institutions take up and renew the research of Conicet, carried out by the researcher Raquel Chan who, in the 90s, developed the HB4 technology to make crops resistant to water stress, something that is already being implemented for soybeans and later for wheat. With the Brazilian precedent of ...