Tierra – Redefining Indian Agriculture

A decade ago, inspired by common vision to transform farmers’ lives, “Tierra” made a humble beginningas a Next Generation Agriculture company. The foremost objective was set to develop superior quality seeds stacked with traits, driven by modern technologies, that provides significant benefits and value to farmers, other stake holders and further contribute to corporate growth. Headquartered in Hyderabad, the seed capital of India, Tierra got passionately engaged in research, development, production, processing, and commercialization of value enhanced – differentiated products in major crops like Cotton, Rice, Corn, Mustard, Tomato and Okra.   During 2017-18, Tierra has gained global attention for achieving a series of historic milestones like – acquisition of Monsanto’s India cotton seed business in 2018; DuPont – Pioneers’ Cotton company ‘Xylem’ in 2017; starting a JV company with a Spanish tech company and initiating a 300-cotton genome project with CSIR. Tierra currently stands among one of the top cotton germplasm enriched companies in the country.
Tierra has established, one of the best in class, private seed sector R&D unit in the country, based in Hyderabad with 10,000 sq. ft. laboratory space which includes several   green houses, more than 50 acres of breeding farms supported with drip irrigation and other essential facilities. Besides Hyderabad, Tierra has also established three more R&D centers, one in Bangalore and the others in Pune and Gurgaon. It has also about 30 crop specific product trialing hot spot centers across the country. Tierra has expanded its Cotton portfolio in the market with many Govt. (GEAC) registered BGII products, many of them suitable for high density planting and mechanization due to synchronous maturity. Tierra has also developed highly strong portfolio in all its crops. High NCLB resistance & deep orange grains in corn; high grain number & blight tolerant rice; high oil & yields in mustard; GBNV (TOSPO) resistance in combination with ToLCV, and high flavour indeterminate virus resistant product line in tomato. In Okra high resistance to YVMV & OLCV. Tierra has strong research collaborations with KeyGene on genomics in rice and CSIR-NBRI on genomics in cotton to discover trait linked markers. Tierra also collaborates with Delhi University on using their molecular markers for white rust in mustard and has established a strong data management tool in collaboration with Phenome Networks of Israel. Tierra protects its products and technologies under suitable Intellectual Property (Patent), Plant Variety Protection (PPV-FR) laws, Trademark registrations etc. besides following strict compliance with all regulatory guidelines including Freedom to Operate (FTOs). With a plan to expand the business, Tierra ventured into vegetable seeds market from the year 2020-21, thereby spreading its portfolio beyond field crops (cotton, paddy, corn, mustard, maize) to vegetable seeds. The vegetable seed portfolio currently offers more than 50 different vegetables. Our strength of research and innovation is poised to address farmers current and upcoming needs.
Vision:
Be a caring Agro-tech company by touching and transforming lives of the farming community. To deliver this vision Tierra employs 216 work force of which 42 are in research and development in conformity with their strong research-based development goal. Tierra is indebted to their investors Mahalaxmi group in first five years and to Continental Coffee Ltd since 2017 for the trust in this vision

Source – Dr Surinder Kumar Tikoo
suren@tierraseedscience.com