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Africa: Continent Warms Up to Biotechnology
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Business Daily (Nairobi)
14 November 2007
Posted to the web 14 November 2007
Ismail Serageldin And Calestous Juma
Much of the debate about biotechnology in Africa assumes that African countries are only being asked to accept products developed elsewhere. To the contrary, Freedom to Innovate: Biotechnology in Africa's Development shows that extensive biotechnology research is under way in Africa.
Africa's governments, its industry and its research institutions are well aware of the potential that agricultural biotechnology holds if applied in other ways and to indigenous crops.
A study of 13 public institutions in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Egypt and South Africa showed that biotechnology applications have been performed on 21 crops.
The genes incorporated into the crops include those that confer insect, fungal, viral and bacterial resistance, protein quality improvements, herbicide tolerance, and salt and drought resistance.
In South Africa, for example, about 20 to 30 per cent of yellow maize and 80 per cent of cotton are now genetically modified varieties.
Estimates for 2004 production showed that about 27 per cent of total yellow maize crop (for animal feed) was genetically-modified (GM).
Less than eight per cent of the white maize grown (for human consumption) is GM.
An insect-resistant potato was developed in South Africa in 2001. The goal was to help small farmers to grow this on a commercial scale. The potatoes performed well in field trials but commercialisation has been delayed.
The first GM biotechnology product to be developed in Kenya was a virus-and weevil-resistant sweet potato. This project began in 1991. The sweet potato trials met some setbacks because it is believed that the construct for the virus resistance was not well tested and it did not perform well under field trials.
In addition, KARI in partnership with the international maize laboratory CYMMIT in Mexico has been developing insect resistant transgenic maize. The maize was tested in field trials in May 2005.
Egypt has worked on more varieties of crops than any other country in Africa. The Genetic Engineering Services Unit (GESU) of the Agricultural Genetic Engineering Research Institute (AGERI) in Egypt has been actively involved in micropropagation of Satavia rebaudiana and mulberry, as well as the production of diagnostic kits for detecting viruses in banana, potato, tomato and beans.
Plant biotechnology research at AGERI also includes transferring genes that confer virus resistance, bacterial resistance, insect resistance, stress tolerance and fungal resistance on such crops as potato, cotton, maize, faba beans, cucurbits, wheat, banana and date palm.
Insect resistant potato is another of the major crops that have been worked on in Egypt by AGERI in partnership with Michigan State University in the USA. Several varieties of potato were transformed for potato tuber moth resistance including a widely grown Dutch variety in Egypt, Spunta. Spunta.
The potato has not been commercialised because of trade concerns in the European Union over GM crops.
The Uganda National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO) opened a new research laboratory in 2003 to conduct work on the genetic modification of banana. The goal was to insert genes that will confer resistance to Black Sigatoka and banana weevils.
Field trials on Bt cotton have been carried out in several countries including Kenya, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Tanzania and Burkina Faso have recently started field trials, while Mali was slated to start field trials in 2005. However, a cotton trial in Zambia has had to be halted because biosafety regulations were not ready at the time.
Biotechnology is being employed to improve the nutritional content of sorghum thanks to the work of a consortium of institutions from Africa, Japan and the US.
Funded by the Gates Foundation and led by Kenya-based Africa Harvest, the consortium's members include the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the African Agricultural Technology Foundation, the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), and the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) of South Africa.
Livestock is critical to agriculture and to food production in Africa, as it is elsewhere.
Yet, according to some estimates, Africa's livestock community is expected to become the most important agricultural sector in terms of physical products derived from agriculture, such as meat products and leather.
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The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is at the forefront of using biotechnology to develop new and improved animal vaccines as well as developing diagnostic tools to combat livestock diseases. These include in particular the high-priority 'orphan' diseases of Africa and South Asia.
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