Syngenta Receives World Business and Development Award
30 September 2008 Syngenta has received the 2008 World Business and Development Award (WBDA) for the development and successful introduction of a new sugar beet that can be grown under tropical climate conditions and brings significant advantages to farmers, the environment, the sugar and ethanol industries, and the economy, announced a company press release.
The WBDA – presented by the United Nations Development Program, the International Chamber of Commerce, and the International Business Leaders Forum – acknowledges the contribution of the private sector to help achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals. The award recognized Syngenta’s tropical sugar beet as “an example of technological innovation that helps increase sustainable agricultural productivity to meet the world’s growing demand for food, feed and fuel”.
Tropical sugar beet, requiring significantly less water than sugar cane, can be grown in relatively dry areas. The beets are also faster growing, which enables farmers to grow a second crop on their land in the same period as sugarcane crops take to mature, increasing farmers’ productivity and income and bringing significant benefits to the agricultural sector of developing markets. Tropical sugar beet delivers similar output yields to sugar cane and can be used both for processing sugar for food and conversion to bioethanol.
It In 2007, the beet – which took Syngenta 11 years to develop – was successfully introduced in India, where Syngenta helped a cooperation of more than 12,000 smallhold farmers in the state of Maharashtra to build and operate a bio-ethanol production plant that runs on Syngenta tropical beet. In Colombia, the construction of two beet-to-ethanol plants has begun; they are expected to start processing tropical sugar beet in 2009.
Currently, Syngenta is conducting adaptation trials in other tropical regions such as China, Australia, Thailand, Vietnam, Kenya, South Africa, Ethiopia, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, and the US.
For further information and pictures: http://www.syngenta.com/en/media/newstopics.28.08.2007.html
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