Diverse and progressive research in seeds has helped Mahyco sustain its growth in the
biotechnology space

Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company Limited (Mahyco) is engaged in R&D, production, processing and marketing of 200 products in 35 crop species, including cereals, oilseeds, fibre crops and vegetables. Mahyco recorded biotech revenue of 364.9 crore in 2010-11 as compared to 312 crore in 2009-10. The continuous growth in the sale of Bt cotton seeds, since its launch in 2002, has helped the company to continue to grow in the biotechnology space.

Mahyco is credited with 21 notified research varieties of seeds and caters to the needs more than 100,000 farmers. It has 27 production centers and has a million seed processing capacity at eight processing plants and more than 9,000 tonnes of dehumidified storage for sensitive seed material. The production and the processing network are supported by a well developed all-India marketing network, consisting of more than 5,000 sales outlets.

The cornerstone of Mahyco’s success has been a strong, diverse and progressive R&D program. Mahyco was the first company in the world to successfully commercialize F1 hybrid cotton, based on genetic and cytoplasmic male sterility system.
Mahyco was also the first company in India to produce and market, hybrid sorghum, pearl millet and sunflower and the first company to receive the Government of India’s approval in 2002 for commercialization of insect-tolerant Bt cotton (Bollgard) followed by a superior Bt cotton (Bollgard II) in 2006.

The company has a state-of-the art R&D center at Dawalwadi near Jalna, Maharashtra, where hybrid breeding programs are presenlty on-going in over 30 crop species and support program in plant pathology, entomology, cytogenetics, biochemistry, tissue culture, rapid cycling, biotech and transgenic plant research are also being carried out. Mahyco also has five more research centers and 18 multi-locational crop performance testing centers distributed across the country. Over 200 scientists are engaged in the research programs at Mahyco.

The research focus at Mahyco Research Center has been in the areas of biotic and abiotic stress tolerance.

The company was involved in pigeon pea and pearl millet breeding program with ICRISAT for over a decade and has also joined the Hybrid Rice Development Consortium, established by IRRI.

Mahyco also shared Bt brinjal technology with public sector institutions in India and abroad, including UAS, Dharwad; TNAU, Coimbatore; IIVR, Varanasi; BARI, Bangaladesh; and UPLB, Philipines.

Mahyco has participated in a number of projects under the aegis of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India, and has entered into numerous partnerships with public institutions and private companies to bring the best technologies to Indian farmers. To name a few, Mahyco is sourcing sucking pest tolerance genes from the Bose Institute, Kolkata and chickpea pod borer resistance genes from Assam Agricultural University (AAU), Jorhat.