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Corteva, agricultural division of US behemoth DowDuPont, grew by 20 per cent in the first half of 2018 in India, the firm’s South Asia Chief KV Subbarao has said. “As against 7 to 8 per cent growth experienced by the industry, we have registered a growth of 20 per cent in the first half of the current year,” he said, in an interaction with the media here on Wednesday.
However, he desisted from revealing the actual numbers as the company is in the process of getting listed on security exchanges, a process, Subbarao said, that would be completed by next June.
Corteva, created by the amalgamation of the agricultural businesses of Dow Chemicals, DuPont and Pioneer Hi-Bred, began operations in India in January. It mainly sells hybrid seeds and crop protection products. Its seed business is confined mainly to hybrid seeds of rice, corn, mustard and bajra crops.
“While we have 20 to 30 per cent market share in seed business (limited to those crops Corteva dabbles in), we are among top 10 in crop protection,” Subbarao said. Corteva currently has a total of 35 seed products (legacy products from the merged entities), he said.
Its corn hybrid seeds, the Corteva chief claimed, could help farmers increase the rabi crop yield by 100 per cent to 50 quintals per acre, particularly in Bihar, Karnataka and Maharashtra. On the export front, Corteva exports its hybrid rice seeds to the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam and limited quantities of corn, millet and mustard seeds to Pakistan.
According to Subbarao, the firm has a strong presence in crop protection business. It has recently launched a couple of new products – a herbicide called Rinskor and insecticide Pexalon, which are based on green chemistry.
Pexalon, which needs to be sprayed only once as compared to an average three sprays farmers resort to, protects paddy crop against brown plant hoppers, a class of insects that brings down yield by 20-70 per cent.
“While products in the similar category offer protection for just one week, a single spray of Pexalon can protect the rice plants for three weeks,” Subbarao claimed.
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