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Biotech crucial to meet MDGs
GENETICALLY-modified (GM) crops are crucial in
significantly reducing poverty and hunger rates
worldwide and may even allow developing countries to
meet their Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.
Clive James, founder and chairman of the International
Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications
(ISAAA), said on Wednesday that “biotech crops have the
potential to make a substantial contribution to the 2015
MDGs of cutting poverty in half, by optimizing crop
productivity, which can be expedited by public-private
sector partnerships, such as the drought tolerant maize
for Africa supported by philanthropic entities such as
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.”
He said the achievement of MDGs goes hand-in-hand with
advances in the cultivation of GM crops and noted that
by 2015, there will be an increase of about 10 countries
adopting biotech crops.
The first biotech-based drought tolerant corn is planned
for release in North America in 2013 and in Africa by
2017, he noted.
Golden Rice will be commercialized in the Philippines
between 2013 and 2014 while biotech corn in China has
the potential of being cultivated in 30 million
hectares, with Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) rice
following thereafter.
“Stacked traits are an important feature—12 countries
planted biotech crops with two or more traits in 2011,
and encouragingly 9 of the 12 were developing
countries—42.2 million hectares, or more than a quarter,
of the 160 million hectares were stacked in 2011, up
from 32.3 million hectares or 22 percent of the 148
million hectares in 2010,” James said.
The five lead developing countries in biotech crops are
India and China in Asia, Brazil and Argentina in Latin
America and South Africa.
These countries represent 40 percent of the global
population, which would reach 10.1 billion by 2100.
“Brazil, for the third year, was the engine of growth
globally, increasing its hectarage of biotech crops more
than any other country—a record 4.9 million hectares, up
20 percent from 2010. A fast-track system approved six
new products in 2011, including a homegrown biotech
virus resistant bean, developed in the public sector by
EMBRAPA ( Brazilian Agricultural Research Cooperation),”
James noted.
“The US continued to be the lead producer of biotech
crops globally with 69.0 million hectares, with an
average adoption rate of 90 percent across all biotech
crops. Planting of RR®alfalfa resumed with up to 200,000
hectares, plus 475,000 hectares of RR® sugarbeet. Virus
resistant papaya from the US was approved for
consumption as fresh fruit/food in Japan, effective
December 2011,” James concluded.
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