As part of REC of the South of Russia, V.S. Pustovoit All-Russian Research Institute of Oil Crops presented its project: “Development of high-protein area of breeding and seed production of oil crops”. The purpose of the project is to ensure the food security of the Russian Federation and to reduce the dependence of domestic agriculture producers on foreign seeds of high-protein oil crops (high-protein sunflower, soybean), to develop the infrastructure for breeding and seed production activities of the end-to-end cycle from the development of new varieties and hybrids to their commercial use.
Project goals:
- to reduce the dependence of agriculture producers of the main high-protein oil crops on foreign seeds;
- prevention of the seed market of high-protein varieties of sunflower and soybean from being occupied by seeds of foreign breeding;
- improvement of research activity in the breeding and seed production of oil crops, the development of new agrobiotechnologies capable of ensuring the high competitiveness of domestic seeds;
- spreading of the positive experience of collaboration between V.S. Pustovoit All-Russian Research Institute of Oil Crops and business partners companies in breeding, seed production, and seed commercialization of oil crops in the high-protein direction;
- development of the infrastructure for breeding and seed production activities of the end-to-end cycle from the development of new varieties and hybrids to their commercial use.
Currently, along with meeting the need of the population in vegetable oils, there is an issue of providing the food and feed industries with protein, a complete source of which are varieties and hybrids of high-protein sunflower and soybean. According to market experts, the sowing share of high-protein varieties in the total sunflower crop acreage in Russia is about 10 %, which indicates the importance of this area of agricultural production. At the same time, in recent years, the Russian market for sowing seeds of high-protein sunflower has seen an increase in the promotion of foreign-bred hybrids from Canada, the USA, the UK, Turkey, Serbia, and Moldova.
A similar situation is observed in the domestic market of soybean seeds for sowing, where the widely presented seeds of foreign and, first of all, Canadian breeding are becoming more and more popular among Russian farmers. At the same time, the soybean crop acreage in Russia increased by 3.5 times over the past ten years and has the prospect of further growth, which is due to the situation on the world market and a significant share of imports in the total volume of soybean processed in our country. Along with the increase in soybean crops, the demand for high-quality seeds for sowing will also grow.