FAISALABAD, Jan 5: Efforts have been initiated to exploit the economic potentialities of biotechnology at national level while Pakistan has also launched a programme to train the much-needed human resources in this technology in Islamic countries.

This was stated by National Commission on Biotechnology chairman Dr Anwar Waseem while speaking at the inaugural session of the international workshop on biotechnology at the National Institute for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering (NIBGE) here on Monday.

He said some 57 countries of the Organization of Islamic Countries especially Malaysia, Iran, Syria, Egypt and Bangladesh had a potential to develop manpower in biotechnology and the longstanding need to take an initiative to gather young scientists of developing Muslim countries so that they could be trained.

He said NIBGE was the only world class institute of biotechnology which had not only played its dynamic role in the promotion of this field of science, but was also fully contributing for the training of human resources. He hoped it would help the Islamic world to set up "Centres of excellence" in their other member countries and play its role in strengthening their economies.

The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission member biosciences, Dr. Kausar Abdullah Malik, explained the achievements of PAEC in the field of agriculture, medicine and biotechnology.

NIBGE director Dr. Ahmad Mukhtar said science and every day life could not and should not be separated. After achieving a success in extending its arms to outer space, scientists were now interested in unravelling the mysteries of nature and life. Our lofty objective at NIBGE was to disseminate the results of research and development in biotechnology for human resource developments and commercialization, he said.

Some 15 participants from Bangladesh, Kazakhistan, Malaysia, Nepal and Syria and 16 scientists from all regions of Pakistan attended the first day of the workshop. However, Dr. Shoun Heaphy from the UK, Dr. Takahashi and Dr. Watanabe from Japan and Dr. Shaukat Farooq from Doha have been engaged as resource persons for the workshop.