A woman scientist has dedicated her life to breeding new rice strains.

A hybrid rice strain was licensed for commercial distribution for VND10 billion (US$601,800) this month.

Nguyen Thi Tram, ex-deputy head of the Hanoi University of Agriculture’s Agrobiology Institute and an independent researcher currently, sold the rights to the TH3-3 strain to Cuong Tan Co., Ltd. of Nam Dinh Province.

She sold the grain because she was unable to market it herself because of research commitments.

But Tram has imposed certain conditions regarding price and the total area on which TH3-3 can be grown.

The strain, which has been sold in many northern provinces since 2003, offers high yields (around six to eight tons per hectare) and a short cropping period (from 105 – 115 days).

It is now grown on around 30,000 hectares.

Tram said it could also grow in almost any soil and terrain and has high resistance to pests, meaning it would help save 50 percent of pesticide costs.

She began working on creating hybrids by crossing two strains of rice after a three-month training course in China in 1994.

By then China had become famous for making hybrids from three strains.

“I realized I would not catch up with them [Chinese partners] if I worked on three-strain rice,” Tram said to explain why she went her own way.

For her research, she received support from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, which first gave her $9,000 and then $200,000.

Three years later Tram filed preliminary reports on her invention, which were accepted by scientists and agricultural officials.

When TH3-3 was approved in 2003 for field trials, many seed companies – both private and public – offered to buy it, but Tram refused to sell.

When it was finally approved for commercial distribution in 2005, Tram began to produce 1,000 tons of seeds annually and sold them herself.

By 2007 she got a patent for the strain.

She admitted TH3-3’s productivity cannot yet compare with that of Chinese three-strain hybrids, but said it has many other advantages, including the fact it is produced domestically.

Though TH3-3 can fetch Tram billions of dong every year, she still decided to sell it since “my partners and I have to work on research and we cannot manage or trade [it] forever.”

“It is time we transferred it to someone so that he or she can develop and expand the area under TH3-3,” she added.

Nguyen Tri Ngoc, head of the ministry’s Cultivation Department, said that Tram’s hybrid rice offers “great encouragement” to Vietnamese agriculture.

The average productivity of the northern winter-spring crop this year is 6.5 tons per hectare, Ngoc said, lower than that of TH3-3.

The ministry plans to extend the area cultivating hybrid rice in the next few years and would subsidize TH3-3 seeds by providing VND6 million ($360) for each hectare of land it is grown on, Ngoc said.

Dedicated rice breeder

Tram, who was born in a non-farming family in the northern province of Ha Nam, decided to study at the Hanoi University of Agriculture.

She graduated in 1968 and joined the Food Crop Research Institute in Hai Duong Province.

She has over the years created many new rice strains.

She sold one of them, TH3-4, to the National Seed Joint-stock Company for VND700 million (US$42,130) last March.

In between, she won the Kovalevskaia Award from the Vietnamese Women’s Union in 2000 and the National Scientific and Technological Award in 2005.

At 66, Tram continues to travel around plains and mountains to study rice breeds.

“I have made necessary studies to establish a center for hybrid rice research and breeding in Son La Province,” Tram said.