INTERUNIVERSITY NETWORK FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SUGAR ENERGY SECTOR

The public-private partnership has existed since PLANALSUCAR, but was maintained and improved by RIDESA. During PLANALSUCAR, the federal government financed most of the research. The technologies developed, including the varieties, were validated in companies. This interaction between PLANALSUCAR researchers and companies allowed this action to continue at RIDESA.

 

However, in this second phase, the cost of this research began to be financed by the mills, distilleries and sugarcane suppliers, with the universities providing partial dedication of professors, researchers, technicians and students to develop the genetic improvement program for sugarcane of the RB cultivars. There are 313 companies with partnership contracts with the universities, representing approximately 75% of the Brazilian entities producing sugarcane, sugar, ethanol and bioelectricity.

 

This makes it much easier to validate and adopt a new variety. That is, when a new variety is released, there are companies that are already cultivating it in large areas. This happens because all partner companies receive the RB clones for evaluation in experiments, a few years before their possible release as a new variety.

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This RIDESA partnership model with companies allows for the definition of cultivar management. Hundreds of experiments are conducted at the mills and distilleries for this purpose. Additionally, the RB clones with the highest productivity in the experiments are evaluated in areas of 10 to 100 hectares, under different management conditions. In this way, there is a very positive interaction between the teams at the universities and the teams at the companies, increasing the number of observations and joint planning for the formation of seedling nurseries, especially for new genotypes that may be released as new RB varieties.

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