The Federal Government will provide the enabling environment for the successful implementation of agricultural biotechnology in Nigeria.
Prof Sheikh Abdullah, said this while inaugurating the N14 million Biotechnology Research Centre built by the Education Trust fund (ETF) at the National Roots Crops Research Institute (NRCRI), Umudike, Abia, on Saturday.
Abdullah also visited the Confined Field Trial (CFT) of a genetically-modified (GM) farm for the Bio-Cassava Plus programme.
The occasion also featured the May 2011 edition of the Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB) being championed by the National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA.
He said at the forum that the government's target was to improve capacity to encourage domestication of biotechnology in Nigeria by building laboratories and personnel to conduct genetic engineering in the institute.
According to him, the challenge of feeding the ever increasing population in the face of the global economic meltdown and food shortage, made the adoption of new technologies that would improve the ability to increase food production imperative.
He noted that Nigeria's population growth rate estimated at three per cent annually had increased the competition for land and water resources and the need to protect the environment.
The country, he noted, needed new solutions to increase its agricultural productivity to combat hunger and poverty, stressing that agricultural biotechnology was a proven tool to complement the traditional breeding method.
Abdullah appealed to the forum to focus on the benefits of biotechnology and its potential risks in the development of the nation's agricultural sector because "it is my firm belief that food security will lead to economic growth.
"We at the Federal Ministry of Agriculture recognize that biotechnology has the potential to help increase food production and productivity in agriculture, forestry and fisheries and enhance income generation," he remarked.
The minister told newsmen after visiting the experimental farm that the country was on course to the adoption of agricultural biotechnology.
Also speaking at the forum, Prof. Bamidele Solomon, the Director-General of NABDA, said: "It is inevitable for us to utilise all technologies, including biotechnology, to address the multifarious problems that face us as a nation," he said.
Solomon, added that the use of biotechnology became necessary because of the need to starve off hunger among the people and to ensure that the dream of achieving vision 20:2020 would not be a mirage.
In his remarks, Chief Mike Chukwu, the Chairman of the Governing Council of NRCRI, urged the Federal Government to strengthen the existing research institutes in the country.
"I want to use this opportunity to call on the Federal Government to further strengthen existing research institutes and to consider the establishment of additional research institutes in the country with special emphasis to the south-east zone," he said.
According to him, the establishment of the new institutes will further address the peculiar agricultural needs of the coastal region of the country,
Earlier, Dr. Kenneth Nwosu, the NRCRI Executive Director, said that the institute had transformed itself from an experimental station to a leading research centre of excellence for root and tuber crops in the entire globe.
Nwosu said that the institute's greatest challenge which tended to impede its progress was inadequate funding to conduct research and power supply and appealed to the incoming government to help NRCRI overcome the problem.
He also appealed to the ministry to assist it to procure a 250 KVA generating plant to power the newly inaugurated biotechnology centre.
Copyright © 2011 Daily Champion.
