Ukrainian market consumes 110-140 thousand tons of corn seed hybrids

Ukrainian market consumes 110-140 thousand tons of corn seed hybrids. The Head of the Plant Breeding and Seed Crops Department of the Institute of Grain Farming, Academician of NAAS Boris Dzubetsky spoke about this at the general meeting of NAAS.
The expert drew attention to a significant difference in the cost of domestic and foreign corn seed hybrids.

"The price for domestic corn seed hybrids, necessary for seeding 4.5 million hectares, is about 3 billion UAH (with an average price of 700 UAH per seed unit), and the prices of the leading foreign companies will amount to 20 billion UAH for the same quantity. This also explains the significant number of breeding companies in Ukraine", he said. 

Boris Dzyubetsky also spoke about the absence of facilities for the certification of seed according to ISTA and OECD requirements, due to the lack of special laboratories, which basically makes it impossible to enter the foreign markets with our hybrids.

According to the expert, in recent years, the number of foreign companies operating in the Ukrainian market increased almost by 30% and the share of the hybrids grew by 20%, which significantly intensified competition in the corn seed market.
The NAAS Academician said that we should not expect a significant expansion of domestic hybrids implementation in the production.

"There are no modern state corn processing plants. Existing plants in the system of the Academy of Agrarian Sciences were built 40-50 years ago and are able to produce less than 3% of the country's demand for corn seeds", he concluded.