Monsanto opens P134-million BT corn seed facility in Philippines

Monsanto Philippines Inc.recently opened a P134-million plant in Pulilan, Bulacan, to serve as its seed “refuge-in-a bag” (RIB) facility, the company recently announced.

“The plant, which sits in a total land area of 6,000 square meters, has RIB blending and packing capabilities, and will also be used for corn seed-quality testing, rebagging, inventory management and warehousing with cold and ambient storage facilities,” Monsanto said in a statement on April 25.

According to the agri-business firm, the plant is operated by 50 people and is the first RIB facility in the country and second in the world.

“The facility, which has an annual capacity of 15,000 metric tons MT, blends non-Bt seeds with Bt seed in a single bag, resulting in the planting of a mixture of Bt corn seeds and non-Bt seeds in the field,” Monsanto said.

The company added it expects the mixture will allow easier compliance for farmers with the refuge requirement without the need to plant or maintain a separate refuge.

Establishing a RIB is a requirement under the Insect Resistance Management (IRM) strategy of the Department of Agriculture (DA) for Bt corn, primarily to preserve the long-term effectiveness of the Bt corn technology as a natural insecticide.

The refuge strategy is global practice aimed at delaying, if not preventing, insect resistance, particularly the Asiatic corn borer, by serving as host to susceptible insects that can mate with the rare-resistant insects surviving exposure to Bt proteins in the Bt corn crop.

Online sources explain structured refuge as setting aside some percentage of the crop land for non-Bt varieties of the same crop, “to provide for the production of susceptible SS insects that may randomly mate with rare resistant RR insects surviving the Bt crop to produce susceptible RS heterozygotes that will be killed by the Bt crop.”

This will remove resistant (R) “alleles” from the insect populations and delay the evolution of resistance, online data revealed.

According to Monsanto, the refuge strategy can suppress the increase of potentially resistant insects by having more susceptible insects mate with the resistant ones, resulting in susceptible offspring, adding that the “the borer population will thus continue to consist largely of susceptible insects to which the Bt corn is effective.”

“Our RIB facility is here to better serve the needs of our farmers,” Monsanto Philippines Country Lead Sandro Rissi was quoted as saying.

“This facility measures up to the highest international standards not only to ensure that we are fully compliant with all local regulatory requirements but that we are also able to provide the best seeds possible to our corn growers,” Rissi added.

Currently, only Monsanto produces products with two Bt proteins that require only 5-percent RIB non-Bt type.  Other companies have single-trait Bt corn products that require 10-percent refuge.