Refuge requirement for Bt technology shows little progress – Rural Channel

• Understand the importance of refuge to preserve Bt technology

But the main entities of agribusiness want legislation to give support to an effective supervision in the field. The recommendations define the size of the refuge within the crops with Bt technology, resistant to caterpillars, that for maize must contain 10% of plants without technology and 20% for soybeans.

The group work, which is formed by the Ministry of Agriculture, researchers, companies and organizations linked to the production of soybeans, corn and cotton, warns that producers understand the haven as an area for the production of insects. Management must be different from conventional farming to ensure the efficiency of the technology and avoid the proliferation of resistant caterpillars to Bt protein.

One of the axes of the National Agricultural Protection Plan is the creation of a regulatory framework for this theme, which will enter technical details, rules to protect crops and new technologies. Only then surveillance on farms have legal support

-. We are in a preparation of the first years of the PDA, so that we send it to Congress, so you can contemplate the protection code – explains the director of the Department of Plant Protection of the Ministry of Agriculture, Luís Eduardo Rangel.

Deployment

According to the director of the Brazilian Association of Producers Seeds (Abrass), Carlos Augustin, companies holding pressure technology to seed producers that provide the equivalent of 20% of conventional varieties to ensure the implementation of the refuge

-. Every farmer corn producer knows that Bt maize have a very low efficiency today. If the reason for this low efficiency is the lack of shelter or not, I’m not scientist to say, but every farmer knows that the refuge was not done as it should. There may be the potential problem of resistance to these corns caterpillar – says Carlos Augustin

A researcher at Embrapa Cerrado Silvana Paula-Moraes is part of the Ministry of Agriculture working group.. She explains that the refuge should be seen as one of the pillars in this defense process, but measures should be much broader for the results to appear

-. We really need an understanding that makes the management Resistance technology. This management involves refuge and more. In addition to the recommendation of refuge percentages, one must understand how important are the operational aspects of the use of technology in property level – explained

.