KARACHI, Dec 8: On the concluding day of a science symposium on Thursday, speakers called upon the developing countries to focus on strengthening of genetic engineering and biotechnology disciplines for economic prosperity.

They said that the scientists and industrialists should make joint efforts for commercial exploitation of biodiversity, diversified flora and other resources available with them in a way that the end-users or consumers could benefit from the developments in the real sense.

The symposium on “Genomics, bioinformatics, biotechnology and economic development” was organized by the Centre of Molecular Genetics, University of Karachi, in collaboration with the Kohat University of Science and Technology and the HEC.

Experts from different countries, including Indonesia, USA, Australia, Iran, China, Oman, Qatar, UAE, UK and Pakistan participated in the five-day symposium.

During the last session devoted to “Ways, obstacles and ethics in commercialization of bio-products”, Dr Michael A. Gealt from USA said that the economic development was dependent on industrial production of goods under condition where the price at which the goods were sold was greater than the cost of production.

He referred to the need of greening of industrial process and said that environmental biotechnology could help make processes safer for the environment, aided remediation and saved corporations money.

Dr Nuzhat Ahmad, director of CMG, said that biotechnology was the best technology for developing countries as they were rich in biodiversity, which had the potential to be exploited commercially.

She said that many bio-products such as bio-pesticides, biopolymers including bio-plastic, bio-fertilizers were available around to replace the use of phosphate fertilizer.

Dr Mansoureh Saniei of Iran talked on bio-technology and ethical aspects of intellectual property rights.

She noted that the problems related to assigning or denying intellectual property rights to biotechnological innovations, with particular reference to the relations between developed and developing countries, existed but that could be sorted out, while the quarters concerned kept in mind that discouraging access to the existing knowledge also meant discouraging the process of producing new knowledge.

Earlier during the day, yet in another presentation, Dr Anwar Nasim, Chairman, National Commission on Biotechnology, reviewed the initiation and evolution of the disciplines in Pakistan.

He said that since the holding of courses in these areas at NIAB, Faisalabad in 1981 there had been a steady growth of biotechnology in the country.