PESHAWAR, Sept 22: NWFP Governor Lt-Gen (retd) Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah will inaugurate the first-ever National Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering (BTGE) at the Agriculture University here on Thursday.

The institute's director Zahoor A Swati said this while talking to APP. He said the institute would be the first in Pakistan in which most of the faculty members would be PhDs in biotechnology and genetic engineering.

He said that world-acclaimed research scholars like Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah, who was a professor in University of Linkoln, Inabrika, USA, and scientist Dr Abdul Majeed Qazi, who was a professor in CIMMYT, University of Mexico, have resigned from these universities and joined the BTGE Institute.

Besides, six PhD scientists and scholars in the field of BTGE like Dr Iqbal Masser, Dr Safdar Hussain, Prof Dr Jahinger Khan Khalil would join the faculty. Dr Swati, however, maintained that such institutes were also running at the Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology, Lahore, National Institute of Biotechnology & Genetic Engineering, Faisalabad, Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering AQ Khan, Karachi, and Aga Khan University, Karachi.

"The institute has collected Rs150 million by competing in different areas of bio technologies under different projects purely on merit," he said. He lauded the Higher Education Commission (HEC), Pakistan Agriculture Research Council, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Science and Technology for their financial support.

He, however, said that they had collected maximum funds through their own resources. He said China and India were tackling their medicines and water shortage problems by developing the BTGE. He said the old methods of preparing medicines from plants and use of water reservoirs for electricity and irrigation were being replaced by innovative methods of BTGE. -APP