Syngenta to expand integrated sugar cane solutions platform

BASEL, SWITZERLAND: Syngenta plans to broaden and scale up its PLENE platform of integrated sugar cane solutions. Through an exclusive licensing agreement with New Energy Farms, Syngenta will access an innovative planting system for sugar cane in Brazil: Crop Expansion Encapsulation and Drilling System (CEEDS). The CEEDS technology enables the realization of PLENE on a commercial scale. It is complementary to PLENE Evolve and PLENE PB, launched last year, which are for nursery production and gap-filling.

The new PLENE offer will be based on encapsulated plant tissue produced in a controlled environment. It provides a higher multiplication rate and a lower unit cost per tonne compared with conventional planting systems. The new PLENE will use high quality plants from Syngenta’s biofactory in Itapolis and will offer a step change in sugar cane planting in terms of speed and quality. Significantly longer shelf life compared with the original PLENE concept should improve transportation logistics and make the technology broadly available. The target market is some two million hectares planted annually in Brazil, with commercialization starting in 2017.

“We have added another innovative technology to our PLENE platform. This will make the planting process for growers more efficient and will bring them high quality genetic material at scale. By multiplying in a controlled environment, we can eliminate field production uncertainties and related economic risks,” said John Atkin, Chief Operating Officer, Syngenta.

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