Market-Enhanced Technological Integration in Favor of Widespread Bt-Cotton Use in Yangtze River Valley (China)

The large diffusion of Bt-cotton in China (mainland) is well documented. It is estimated that Bt-cotton covers about 70% of the national cotton areas. Cotton is produced in three regions: Yellow River Valley, Yangtze River Valley and Xinjiang Province located in the North West of the country. In this latter province, pest pressure is low and there is little rationale to using Bt-cotton. This type of cotton is hence mainly grown in the Yellow and Yangtze River Valleys. This communication provides evidence of the large scale diffusion of Bt-cotton in Yangtze River Valley (far much less addressed in papers accessible to international community). It confirms that, in this region, specific advantages of Bt-cotton are of limited extent, if any, as it was already reported by Chinese scholars. This is a case of paradox which has not been reported earlier. The communication is based on official data series which have seldom been exploited, in particular data related to cotton areas distributed between the main varieties and to registration for variety marketing at national scale. Our communication suggests two factors to explain the observed paradox. We first contend that the Bt-cotton diffusion has benefited from synergy with preexisting production techniques, namely transplanting with hybrid seeds, phenomenon we call technological integration.  This integration has besides been enhanced by a remarkable development of variety and seed sectors, which literally has embedded the technological integration into hybrid seeds. The concept of technological integration leads to question the practice of Bt-cotton seed pricing while it might be more general than the studied case.