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April 24, 2023
Good results to produce castor beans in El Morro
This is a commitment by the companies Grupo Los Grobo and Green Tech to obtain oil to export to Brazil and use it as a biolubricant for metalworking.

The results shown by the crop a few weeks after harvesting leave investors and technicians very satisfied. The first experience in San Luis with castor to produce oil for export will give people talk.

It is a perennial species that can live for more than 10 years, but agronomically, it is managed as an annual crop, similar to a mechanized summer annual crop.

This initiative was undertaken by an alliance between the companies Grupo Los Grobo and Green Tech Science in El Escorial, a 1,500-hectare field located a few kilometers south of the town of San José del Morro, where a 70-hectare plot shows the very good condition of the plants, with the first seeds containing 60% oil.

This business bet is oriented to the production of oil destined for the cosmetic industry, but mostly to the production of biolubricants for the automotive industry, and to a lesser extent in the bioplastic and biojet industry, which is gasoline for airplanes.

The production that is achieved in San Luis will have two destinations, the obtaining of selected seeds with a laser classifier and the production of oil by extruding and pressing.

Gabriel Aguilera, agronomic adviser and administrator of El Escorial, told El Campo magazine that in September of last year they planted the lot with castor beans, which in principle was going to reach 200 hectares: "It was quite a novelty, because the company also Green Tech has an elaborate protocol for this crop that I learned as I went along."

The firm had already been multiplying seeds, part of which it used to implant them in the demanding lands that surround El Morro hill.

“I was surprised by the uniformity that this batch achieved, despite the fact that this plant is still very rustic. It is a very pleasant experience because the crop was developed and the total area was achieved, with a great adaptation to the area, which is cold and exposed to hail and erratic rains”, described the professional.

Investigating with his colleague Ramiro Goncalvez, a bibliography from a hundred years ago was found in which the San Luis writer Dalmiro Adaro recommended that San Luis exploit this crop to obtain castor oil. “It says exactly the same thing that we are doing today, with such precision as to suggest ten kilos of seed per hectare, the same yield expectation, the same contribution of plants, the same benefits”, he highlighted. Due to the excellent results that appear in the production of castor beans in San Luis, for Aguilera it is a great alternative for the province to produce it and add value to a product with growing international demand.

The plant, which is also used as an ornamental, is perennial and almost a shrub, growing to a height of one and a half meters. The variety planted in El Morro is Maravilla, whose main virtue is that it has 60% oil in the seed, a result that was seen in the samples of the first seeds analyzed.

It has a slow growth until the first 45 days, developing a plant of 10 to 15 centimeters. After that, the growth is explosive, with very deep roots, so it needs a space so that they do not compete with each other and avoid dominance, Aguilera indicated.

For this reason, the density is very low, at a rate of one plant every one meter and at a distance of 52 centimeters between lines, which is what corn planters have today, with which 15,000 plants per hectare were implanted.

"Now we see that the ideal is one meter by one meter because there was competition between furrows," he pointed out as aspects to correct. An image taken last week by a drone shows the 70 hectares even and intact, while the neighboring maize crops, planted on the same date, are totally burned by the unexpected frost of February 18.

With a technician who visits it regularly to monitor it, they closely monitor the weather because two frosts in a row would cut off the plant's cycle and enable the most awaited moment: harvest. Castor oil has a high boiling point. A bio-oil is produced that maintains its characteristics up to 270 degrees Celsius, which is why it is demanded by the automotive and metalworking industries because these conditions delay wear in high friction. Mexico and Brazil have a demand for castor oil that exceeds their own production.

The postharvest process

The Greentech company technician, Diego Tarantola, is an agronomist, in charge of Industry and Logistics and described that the threshing is done with a common harvester, with a sunflower head and some care to minimize losses. Since the grains go with a little shell, the trucks that transport them must have overrails, generally used for peanuts.

It is taken to a soybean extruding and pressing oil mill, reconditioned to process grains with more oil and similar to those used for peanuts, which have 48% oil.

The company has an oil plant in Ticino, Córdoba, and another in Villaguay, Entre Ríos. Much of the harvest is saved for seed that is selected with a laser sorter, which takes the highest purity and size.

There is a laser way to identify the seed that has the physical and varietal purity that is the one that the firm developed.

"The plant itself generates many mutations from one year to the next and within the same cycle and changes color, for which we have developed software with which the laser reader identifies those seeds that are white or that have a paler or darker and since it does not respond to the characteristics that the company developed, it takes them out and classifies them by size”, explained Tarantola.

These selected seeds are then treated with a hormone and a specific fungicide for castor bean, to have good germinative power because it is used for multiplication.

On the other hand, the seed that is made for the industry can be sold in that state and exported to Brazil or, if you want to add more value, you will take advantage of what you already have in Argentina, which are these extruded-pressed factories. . The idea of giving more value to the grain and taking it to oil, which is used in the cosmetics industry and mostly for refining lubricants, not as fuel to make biodiesel, but to make biolubricants, such as motor oils, for hydraulic systems, among others. .

For the adviser, the great interest that this crop arouses today is that it can conquer more arid areas, where classical agriculture is not. “This spurge is conceived and designed to develop in sectors where there is no agriculture and therefore does not compete with food species; it has the capacity to withstand more infertile environments, with more extreme temperatures, more complicated water stress”, he assessed.

“Our largest number of hectares is in Corrientes, where there are only pines and eucalyptus trees for timber and some livestock. The company certifies that this oil comes from a non-agricultural area and that gives the European Union a much more commercial interest in being able to export it, because they must comply with a rule of the Kyoto Treaty referring to environmental requirements, which not only say that They must not contaminate, but rather that throughout their process they do not influence the food industry, such as not removing farmland for human consumption”, he described.

environmentally responsible

Martín Sackmann, manager of Innovation and Technical Development of Grupo Los Grobo, highlighted that in the company "we seek to be environmentally responsible, we take care of the planet by using and promoting production systems that provide the best yields and increase the value of the land and its productive capacity at all times. in fair balance with caring for people, their interests and needs”.

For the manager, sustainability is a highly relevant issue and makes them work every day to find best practices to be applied in the different links of the value chain.

He explained that for this reason they continue to use the direct sowing method as a practice to preserve soil resources and in line with this production system "we are adopting a greater use of double crops to intensify carbon capture (59,643 hectares of double crops out of 196,410 physical hectares, = 30.3%)”.

He added that they increased the use of cover crops to improve the structure and fertility of the soils instead of the traditional long chemical fallows, while they have a Security Protocol with the objective of defining the parameters for the application of agrochemicals in the fields where the group has participation.

Sackmann also highlighted that they certified 5,891 hectares with RTRS (Round Table Responsible Soy) and 79,000 tons with Sustainable Soy (2BSVS).

"With the aim of increasing diversity, growing intensification in the systems and meeting the needs of markets that demand renewable energy, we are introducing, in our associated crops, new crops in the rotation: green peas, yellow peas, rapeseed, carinata, camelina and castor," he explained.
 
In line with this last objective, this year together with one of his partners and Gabriel Aguilera they planted 71 hectares of castor beans in the town of El Morro.

An advance

Dalmiro S. Adaro, a professor graduated in 1880 and a student of the history, geology, geography, and pedagogy of San Luis, published in 1916 "Creole industries or phytotechnics, applications of indigenous and exotic vegetables," which contains a series of lectures given to her students from the Normal School for Teachers of San Luis.

In chapter V, dedicated to oilseed plants, he provides details on how to practice their cultivation, with data that surprisingly coincides with those currently used, such as 10 kilos of seed per hectare, at a distance of one meter between plants and between lines to achieve 3 thousand kilos on the same surface and containing 60% oil. The publication is in a valuable library in San Francisco del Monte de Oro belonging to Silvina Schenk, whose copies she contributed to the magazine El Campo Ramiro Goncalvez. → eldiariodelarepublica.com

Automatic translation from spanish.

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