Livro Agroceres

they were only interested in a deal involving a controlling
down and sold back to Agroceres three years on. As Bio-
ing season adaptability, good leaf sanity, and high nutrient
event was also authorized. Bt technology was coming to
stake in the business.
matrix had not yet developed its own lineages and hybrids,
and fiber digestibility.
change the Brazilian corn seeds market, and Biomatrix was
At the end of eight months of negotiations, Agroceres
decided to seal the deal with Monsanto. According to
this deal, Agroceres retained ownership of the Agroceres
brand and the Ant Bait and Animal Genetics and Nutrition
businesses, while Monsanto acquired the Corn, Sorghum,
and Vegetables Seeds business and a license to use the
Agroceres brand in its seed business alone. The transaction
was completed in November 1997 and allowed Agroceres’s
controllers to return to the seed market after a
five-year quarantine.
it decided to start by multiplying, processing, and selling
products with Embrapa genetics.
Early on, Biomatrix decided that its seeds had to be recognized
for high quality standards. It focused production on
the irrigated areas of Paracatu, Minas Gerais, and invested
in drying capacity to allow harvest in ears. To monitor and
ensure its quality standards, Biomatrix equipped its lab to
carry out rigorous purity, germination, infestation, vigor, and
mechanical damage analyses
Biomatrix began its improvement program in 2004, af-
The success of BM-3061 helped the company realize the
importance of the silage segment in Brazil. Together with
Agroceres Multimix and specialized consultants, Biomatrix
started to include nutritional quality tests in its improvement
program and launched a cycle of technical lectures on silage
intended for customers and for its own technical service
people. As a result, it attained a high market share in the
segment, with BM-3061 itself and the subsequent release of
new products, such as BM-3063, BM-3066, SHS 4070,
SHS 7920, and SHS 7990.
quick to respond. It struck an agreement with Dow to sell
Herculex products and another with Monsanto to introduce
the VTPRO-2 gene in its own germplasm.
In mid-2011, Biomatrix expanded its seeds business by
acquiring the operations of Santa Helena Sementes, a traditionally
established company founded in the 1980s. The
acquisition brought in an experienced team, 14 hybrids
with Santa Helena’s own genetics, an extensive hybrids and
lineages development program, and a wide-ranging commercial
network that covered the entire country and some
More than five years passed until, in May 2003, the
Agroceres Group decided to exercise its option and return
to the seeds market. Seed prices had had a marked rise as
the market consolidated in the hands of few competitors,
and the sowing of GMO seeds had not yet been cleared in
Brazil. Urbano believed that there was room in the country
for a new seeds company and, with the encouragement
and support of former colleagues, spearheaded the establishment
of Sementes Biomatrix.
ter acquiring and licensing two germplasm banks that had
been created by independent researchers. This material led
to the 2005 release of the company’s first successful hybrid,
the BM-2202, a product broadly adapted to Brazil’s many
climate and soil conditions.
In 2006 came BM-3061, Biomatrix’s first product intended
for corn silage production.
Corn silage, a component used to feed dairy and beef
cattle, is produced from the entire plant, including stem,
Still, Biomatrix was not limited to silage. In 2007, it
launched the BM-810, which soon came in first in the Ma
Shou Tao competition field in Conquista, Minas Gerais, at
12,139 kg/ha. Today, products like BM-709 and SHS-
7990 go as high as 13,000 kg/ha in the summer and
9,000 kg/ha in the second harvest, rivaling the productivity
of the market’s best known brands.
In 2007, CTNBio – the Federal agency in charge of
GMO products regulation in Brazil – authorized sales of
South American markets. When the two brands merged,
Biomatrix decided to change its corporate name to Helix
Sementes, which is now the biggest Brazilian-controlled
corn and sorghum seeds company.
The company has three research stations in subtropical
Passo Fundo, Rio Grande do Sul; in high-altitude tropical
Patos de Minas, Minas Gerais; and in low-altitude tropical
Ipiaçu, Minas Gerais. It has used haploidy technology to
create lineages since 2010 and carries out experimental
Biomatrix commenced operations in Patos de Minas, at
leaves, and ears. Silage corn requires specific characteris-
the first Bt genetically modified event in Brazil, Monsanto’s
assays at 44 sites in eight Brazilian states to test its hybrids.
the Processing Unit that Monsanto had bought but later shut
tics, such as high green-mass and grain volume, broad sow-
YieldGard. Soon thereafter, in 2008, Dow’s Herculex Bt
Recently, its broad genomic selection project was approved
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