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| June 17, 2005 | Friday | Jumadi-ul-Awwal 9, 1426 |
‘Biotechnology solution to salinity’
ISLAMABAD, June 16: Biotechnology has the potential to evolve salinity/drought-tolerant crops to help attain national food security. The technology can offer urgent and indigenous solutions to salinity and low rainfall threatening cultivations in one- fourth arable area of the country.
These views were expressed by National Commission on Biotechnology (NCB) Secretary Dr Kauser Abdulla Malik at a one-day seminar of biotechnologists convened by the commission at the auditorium of Pakistan Council for Science and Technology on Thursday. The event aimed at evolving strategy to counter the menace of salinity and drought.
Dr Malik, also member (Biosciences), Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), said importance of research on evolution of crops resistant to drought/salinity could be gauged from the fact that agricultural produce constituted 25 per cent of the GDP and engaged more than 50 per cent of total job market in the country.
He said Pakistan had already made a good beginning in evolution of some salinity-resistant species of trees, fodder and crops using nuclear and molecular techniques. The PAEC apart from its utilization in the country, is sharing the technology with nine member countries of the International Atomic Energy Agency. But now more such food and cash crop varieties need to be evolved to benefit national economy, he said.
Through the use of biotechnology, already 25,000 acres of saline lands in the country are being put to use through Farmers Participatory Programme under a government project worth Rs178 million.
Dr Malik said conventional engineering methods of salinity control were expensive and time consuming, therefore, introduction of crop varieties which could grow on saline lands offered superior and immediate economic dividends.
The benefits of crop varieties growing in saline and arid lands are socially important as well because presently these unproductive lands are forcing the local people to migrate to urban centres for livelihood. With salt tolerant crops, these areas will again offer opportunities for survival and bring back their inhabitants, the expert said. Drought-resistant crops, Dr Malik said, would add to the total national cultivated area, thus raising the country’s income and converting arid areas into livable and likable localities.
The purpose of national conference of biotechnologists is to initiate research projects in the institutes represented in the moot and also to prepare a national project aimed at countering the adverse effects of salinity and drought.
These deliberations of biotechnologists come at the heels of a recently-concluded international conference on “Biotechnology for Salinity and Drought Resistance in Crops” in which partnerships for joint research on the subject with developed countries like the US and others were consolidated.
The national institutions which participated in the national moot included National Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering; Nuclear Institute of Agriculture and Biology; Agriculture University, Faisalabad; Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology, Punjab University; Karachi University; Nuclear Institute of Agriculture; University of Arid Agriculture, Rawalpindi; National Agricultural Research Council; and Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering (NWFP).
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