ISLAMABAD, June 17: Biotechnology can play a vital role for development of agriculture sector to improve the economy and alleviate poverty.

Dr Nahim Iqbal Hashmi, Member Crop Sciences, Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC), said this while inaugurating a five-day training course on "Micro propagation in Banana" held at the National Agricultural Research Centre (NARC) here on Thursday.

Dr Hashmi said the participants of this course would learn the latest techniques to be disseminated to others in the provinces. He said biotechnology could make an impact on agriculture productivity of Pakistan, if appropriate and cost- effective technologies with a potential to produce visible results were adopted.

He said in fact the agriculture sector of Pakistan had not fully benefited from the full potential of technologies at the cutting edge of research as had been witnessed at the global level.

Dr Hamid Rashid, Director Biotechnology Programme, NARC, said banana was a vegetative propagated fruit crop cultivated over an area of 26,000 hectares with annual production of 93,000 tonnes. -APP