Lu Yuping, general manager of the DBN Biotech Center, said that the center is looking for opportunities to cooperate with Argentine enterprises, with the aim of establishing laboratories for soybean seed breeding, and popularizing Chinese soybean seed plantation in Argentina and possibly around Latin America. Lu made the comments at the 2013 SMEs Development Forum, a sub-forum of the Boao Forum for Asia.

The DBN Biotech Center is a subordinate research center of the DBN Group, a public company founded in 1993 which focuses on the bio-technology exploitation and industrialization of maize, soybean, rice and other plants. The center signed a cooperative memorandum with Argentina's Bioceres Company - which focuses on investing in bio-technology development and plantation - during the China, Latin America, and Caribbean Agriculture Department Minister Forum in June last year. The company's shareholders include many research institutions, such as the INDEAR, and hundreds of local farms in Latin America.

Lu Yuping said the DBN Biotech Center aims to industrialize bio-technology in Latin America, and the "Latin American side will provide local seed resources, while the DBN side will offer technologies to breed new seed that can be cultivated in Latin America. And after the seed is ready, both sides will popularize the new achievement in Latin America through variouses channels."

DBN is also planning to enter the Latin America market of transgenosis food. Though many Chinese enterprises have been conducting agriculture-related business in Latin America - like investing, manufacturing and exporting - the business of direct breeding supported by Chinese technology is still new territory.

Zheng Yujie, a senior researcher at the China Investment Corporation, said that there are only a few precedents of the Chinese seed industry breeding seed overseas.

Edited by Chen Zhilin and Niva Whyman