Pakistan Among Top Biotechnology Thriving Countries
There are about 26 countries, which biotech crops are grown and Pakistan is present at the 7th number. When the ‘Global Status of Commercialization Biotech / GM Crops 2016’ were done then at that time the fact was presented during the international center for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS) of Karachi University.
Out of 3 million hectares, which is used for the agriculture, Pakistan achieved 97% adoption of insect resistant (IR) biotech cotton and it roughly equates to about 2.9 million hectares.
After getting the target last year, the stakeholders are looking for the economic boost through the varieties of biotech Maize.
About Report
The report is prepared by International Service to get the Agri-biotech applications and the reports throws light on the countries, where varieties of crops utilize the biotechnology for its growth. There are various quantities of crops, global trends, distribution, future prospects and adoption of biotech crops last year.
It is started in 2010 and the number of farmers grown the biotech cotton crops, which are reached to 725,000 in 2016. With the boost in the agriculture sector, the biotech crops have the huge impact on the economy. The growth of crops helped in strengthening the economy by $398 million in 2015 and $4.3 billion from 2010 to 2015.
Pakistan Among Top Biotechnology Thriving Countries
Factors Hamper Growth
The report underlined following factors, which hampered growth of biotech crops:
- Depending on old IR technology
- Supply low-quality IR cotton varieties
- Increasing threat of pink bollworms and bollworms in general, and there is lack of timely insecticide application.
- Absence of control measures leading to cotton leaf curl viruses because of white fly and leaf hoppers
Biotech Community
Federal Ministry of Climate Change‘s National Biosafety Community approved cultivation of IR maize varieties and these varieties are subject to approval from Federal Seed Certification and Registration Committee.
The committee has accorded the approval of 32 out of 119 single biotech varieties of cotton. The year of 2016 proved to be quite substantial for biotech crops as Nobel laureates to show their support for biotechnology dependent crops and the golden rice is the controversial variety of rice. It is said in the report that Pakistan has planted over 1.2 m hectare of maize, which has roughly produced about 5m tones of maize. With the adoption of hybrid maize, it reached to 90 pc and 10-15 pc of total maize area in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa respectively.
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