The Nanoneem team from HCM City’s International University and Foreign Trade University in Hà Nội at the online global final round of the 2021 Social Business Creation competition on October 2 before it won the first prize. Photo Courtesy of the International University

HCM CITY — The Nanoneem project by the namesake team from HCM City’s International University and Foreign Trade University in Hà Nội that uses nanotechnology to produce herb-based pesticides to enable green agriculture has won the first prize in the 2021 Social Business Creation competition, a cash award of 30,000 Canadian dollars (US$23,743) and a 4,200-dollar scholarship.

The Social Business Creation is an annual global competition to promote social business creation organised by HEC Montréal Canada, a public business school, and Prof Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi who won the Nobel Peace prize in 2006.

The project was led by Dr Dương Nguyễn Hồng Nhung, a lecturer at the university's School of Biotechnology.

She said 73 per cent of pesticides in Việt Nam contain hazardous compounds, leading to 3,000 cases of pesticide poisoning in the first half of 2011. The root cause is that there is no access to effective bio-pesticides at reasonable cost in the country, she said.

“We want to collaborate with many other projects in green agriculture to stop using poisonous plant protection chemicals. We also need more policies from the Government to develop green agriculture.”

The competition attracted 265 teams from 80 universities from 24 countries. VNS