Kitavi Mutua
19 May 2008
Nairobi — TWO HIGH-PROFILE PARALLEL initiatives are underway to promote the production of genetically modified sorghum grain in Kenya for domestic and industrial use.
Launched separately by different agricultural experts, if successful, the twin initiatives will have far-reaching economic implications for thousands of peasant farmers in the country.
The first plan is an international scientific research innovation aimed at improving sorghum grain to nutritious levels through genetic engineering.
The Ksh1.3 billion ($21 million) project intends to turn the widely unpopular sorghum grain, largely considered food for the poor and underprivileged into a more nutritious foodstuff.
A consortium of nine global scientific research bodies have come together under the Africa Bio-fortified Sorghum (ABS) project to develop the nutritional value of sorghum in search of long-term solutions to malnutrition in Africa.
Sorghum is ranked the fifth most important staple food in the world after wheat, rice, maize and barley.
The project seeks to develop more nutritious and easily digestible sorghum varieties that contain increased levels of essential amino acids, vitamins A and E, and more available iron and zinc.
The approach adopted by the ABS project is to introduce selected genes mainly from plant sources into the genome of sorghum in a more careful and gradual way that does not compromise other attributes of the grain.
At the local level, a parallel legislative plan is in progress to change agricultural policies that have discouraged the crop's production over the years.
THIS SECOND INITIATIVE seeks to discourage brewing firms in the country from importing barley for beer making in favour of the cheaper, locally produced sorghum in order to benefit farmers.
Kitui south MP Isaac Muoki wants to introduce legislation to compel the government to impose heavy taxes on barley importation in order to promote sorghum growing.
The legislator says that if adopted, the move would substantially improve the economic wellbeing of millions of poor farmers in arid regions where erratic weather patterns make farming difficult.
"This country is living a big irony. We import barley from Russia and Canada at very exorbitant prices to make beer when cheap sorghum can be grown locally for the same purpose at great economic benefits to poor farmers," he said.
Farmers, Mr Muoki said, would effectively cultivate enough sorghum as long as the market for their produce was guaranteed.
Barley, the grain traditionally used to brew most beer, grows best in countries with cooler climates, but its rising price due to high global demand and shipping costs have made beer making more expensive than ever.
The ABS project, the first of its kind in Africa, is the first attempt to use genetic modification for the improvement of sorghum, which is an indigenous crop with wild relatives in many African countries.
The GM sorghum's proponents say millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa suffer from health problems associated with vitamin and mineral deficiency. The situation is made worse by arid climates with poor soils that cannot support the production of the foods such as fruits and vegetables needed to naturally supply these essential nutrients.
It is estimated that up to 80 per cent of children in the region receive inadequate amounts of Vitamin A, which half the entire population suffers from iron deficiency, and a third from zinc deficiency.
Sorghum is one of the few crops that grow well in arid climates, but it lacks most essential nutrients, hence the move to improve it through genetic engineering.
The institutional partners in this initiative are Kenya's Africa Harvest, South Africa's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Pioneer HiBred International and the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) based in the US .
Others are the Agricultural Research Council (ARC), the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), the International Crops Research Institute for Semi Arid Tropics (Icrisat) and the Universities of Pretoria and California-Berkeley.
Dr Florence Wambugu, the chief executive officer of Africa Harvest, the lead organisation in the ABS consortium, said that in the wake of global warming challenges, food security cannot be achieved without improving locally bred cultivars of some indigenous grain crops like sorghum and other staple foods.
"Malnutrition remains a leading direct and indirect cause of the rise in the many non-communicable diseases in Africa where deficiencies in essential micronutrients bring about impaired immune systems, blindness, low birth weight and stunting and impaired neuropsychological development," Dr Wambugu said.
SHE SAID THAT THE NINE ME-mber consortium had adopted the GM technology because the regular breeding approaches can not produce the magnitude of change needed to make a significant impact.
"We hope that through this project will substantially improve grain digestibility and make essential vitamins and micro-nutrients more available," she added.
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