A corn with a new trait – built-in resistance to herbicides – was recently approved for cultivation in the Philippines, agribusiness firm Syngenta announced recently.

The genetically enhanced corn trait GA21, a product of Syngenta research, received cultivation approval in the Philippines, following biosafety and other required assessments by the Department of Agriculture (DA).

“GA21 is Syngenta’s viable option for an effective weed management of corn farms to maximize yield,” Recher Ondap, Syngenta Philippines country head for seeds, told the Business Mirror in an e-mail interview.

“This [Philippine] approval further strengthens Syngenta’s portfolio of high-quality seeds and allows us to continue bringing advanced agricultural technology to the growers in this region,” said Peter Pickering, Syngenta Seeds Asia-Pacific region head.

The firm said the GA21 corn offers growers increased productivity and reduced production costs.

GA21 corn will be available in the Philippines market this coming wet cropping season, Ondap said.

He said GA21 has been commercially cultivated in the US since 1997, Canada, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa. In the US alone it has been cultivated in 10.3 million hectares since 1998.

Syngenta’s other genetically modified corn in the insect-tolerant Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt)-11 corn, which is introduced in the Philippine market in 2005 and has since been grown commercially by Filipino farmers, Ondap said.

GA21 corn is tolerant to glyphosate herbicide but does not have resistance to insects like the corn borer. It is exactly the same as the conventional hybrid counterpart, but with the addition of the herbicide-tolerant trait, he explained.

Ondap pointed out that since GA21 is only herbicide-tolerant, “appropriate crop-protection products must be applied to protect it from borers.”

He announced that Syngenta’s next product – the Bt11xGA21 corn stack – combines the borer-resistance and herbicide-tolerance traits into one hybrid to be able to provide better seeds for farmers. “The stack product will be launched later this year,” he told the Business Mirror.

When asked how long it took the DA to approve the corn trait for cultivation, Ondap said: “We [Synganta] did greenhouse trials [2007-2008], followed by multilocation field trials [2008-2009] to demonstrate the efficacy and the benefits derived from this trait. [The] BPI [Bureau of Plant Industry, a DA agency] thoroughly assessed [the] food, feed and environmental safety of GA21 before approving this event for commercial cultivation.”

Syngenta added that the cultivation of GA21 corn in the Philippines would enable the agribusiness firm to accelerate the development and introduction of better hybrid varieties and new traits, responding to the growing demand across the Asia-Pacific region.

Syngenta is one of the world’s leading companies with more than 24,000 employees in more than 90 countries. It said it is committed to sustainable agriculture by raising productivity through innovative research and new technology.