Buenos Aires, March 18th. It’s probably that this is not a well-known datum, but 21% of the global inoculants market is held by an Argentine company, Rizobacter. The company was founded in 1977 in Pergamino City, the heart of the Pampas, by a small group of entrepreneurs. One of them is Ricardo Yapur, current vice-president after Bioceres Group acquired 50.01% of the shares in 2016. This year we met Mr. Yapur at the Expoagro fair and we talked about the present of the company and about its most relevant milestones. “We reached incomes for US$150 million last year (2018), where Export unit represented more than 20 percent. We have a strong position in the Brazilian market, that is our largest foreign market, but also in the rest of Mercosur, Bolivia, Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany, India, and South Africa”, Yapur says in dialogue with www.eFarmNewsAr. “The plan is to reach US$80 million in the export business in the next three years. We have the ultimate technology in inoculants and we, an Argentine company, are the third world largest suppliers after two giant global companies like Novozymes, owned by Monsanto and now Bayer and Becker Underwood owned by BASF”, Yapur explain. After two years absent of the fair, this March Rizobacter returned to Expoagro. As part of the Bioceres Group, they are supporting the HB4 technology, a local discovery that provides crops tolerance to drought and salinity. Bioceres is de-regulating the technology in Argentina and other countries, like China and Brazil, and is ready to launch HB4 soybean and HB4 wheat. In this context, this year Rizobacter presented Rizoliq Dakar, an inoculant specially designed to treat soybean in drought and high temperatures environments. “It’s the fruit of a working joint the Rio Cuarto University (in Cordoba province). The scientific team worked hard selecting Bradyrhizobium strains with tolerance to water stress and high temperatures. With these strains, we developed a product for treating the soybean seeds for planting in marginal environments. Rizoliq Dakar brings the crop a fastest and vigorous nodulation, that at the end of the day means better yields”, Yapur details. But this product will be a great combination with the HB4 soybean, because not only the crop develops a better nodulation thanks the inoculants, but is prepared to suffer less harm in a drought situation, thanks to HB4 gene incorporated to its DNA. Yapur also referred to Microstar, a micro-fertilizer that provides phosphorus at the starting of the crop cycle. “It’s a great advantage in respect to classic fertilizers because it has not acid reaction and thus you can put them jointly with the seed when you are planting. In the other hand, you use a 20 kilogram per hectare dose, thanks its high solubility that assures the nutrient is quickly taken by the roots. We are very pleased with this product. Sales are growing fast and we project to dispatch to the market 20 thousand tons this season and sustain a steady growth rate until to reach 50 thousand tons, or our production capacity”, the VP of Rizobacter concludes, talking with www.eFarmNewsAr.com.