Biotech crop approval in Pakistan

NAME IMRAN ALI

REG NO 657-FBAS/BSBT/F14SUBJECT Industrial biotechnology

DEPATMENT BIOTECHNOLOGY

FACULTY OF BASIC AND APPLIED SCIENCES

INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY ISLAMABAD

Contents

Introduction

Status of Biotech crops in Pakistan

First Bt cotton grown in Pakistan

Sugarcane in Pakistan

Status of corn/ maize in Pakistan

Conclusion

References

IntroductionThe economic backbone of Pakistan is agriculture. Most of the population of Pakistan lives in

rural areas hence depending on agriculture to fulfill their need. Conventional ways of

agriculture are not feasible anymore as the demand for food is high so biotechnology offers

relief in this difficult time when yield is low and demand is high. Rice and wheat are the staple

food of Pakistan where as sugarcane and cotton are the cash crops through which most of

farmers earn their living. These four crops are grown regularly in a periodic way to optimize

their yield with minimum damage to the nutrients present in the soil. But conventional ways do

not give sufficient yield nor does the wild type crops, this is where biotechnology comes in

hand, it has a lot of potential to promote the increase in the yield of crops and their resistance

against the diseases like rust and smut. Genetically modified crop is the one whose DNA has

been modified by using recombinant technology or by genetic engineering, it is also called

biotech crop or GM Crop. This modification is done in order to incorporate the traits that

naturally does not exist in that plant. Biotechnology has replaced the use of traditional

pesticides and fertilizers in the world as the synthetic fertilizers reduced the fertility of the soil

and the nitrogen based fertilizers released NO2 which caused global warming by being

greenhouse gas. The chemical herbicides and pesticides put human health in danger. Still more

than 90 % of the farmers of Pakistan grow wheat from their own seeds. The new genes having

desirable traits like pest resistance, drought resistance and herbicide tolerance are called novel

genes. The first biotech crop was commercialized in 1996. After the introduction of GM crops

increased number of farmers are growing GM crops, 12 million farmers in 23 countries are

using GM crops. The top countries which are producing biotech crops are USA, Argentina,

Brazil, Canada, India and China. They are producing 95% of all the GM crops worldwide (James

2007). The productivity gains by producing GM crops have improved the economies of

emerging countries.

Status of Biotech crops in PakistanPakistan is an agricultural country whose more than 50% population is dependent on

agriculture for earning a living. Agriculture sector contributes about 25% to GDP. Pakistan has

to maintain its stable growth otherwise it will suffer, Pakistan is supplier of agricultural products

as it not only meets its own country’s requirement but also exports the crops to the other

countries like India, Afghanistan, Saudia Arabia and other middle east and central asia

countries. Pakistan with population of over 180 million is now facing problems like water

logging, drought, salinity and climatic stress. The need to use GM crops in Pakistan is ever great

however there are some controversies over the use of biotech crops. Until 2005 only Bt cotton

was grown in southern Punjab. Pakistan Atomic Energy Commision (PAEC) gave about 40,000 kg

seeds of different varieties of Bt cotton including “ IR-FH-901”, “IRNIBGE-2”, “IR-CIM-448” and

“IR-CIM-443” in May 2005. This cotton was grown on 8000 acres in 2005-2006. The results were

checked on the basis of Bio safety rules by PAEC. Bt cotton was in grown in Bahawalpur,

Muzaffer Garh and Multan side. The farmers observed that the Bt cotton produced more yield

and were more resistant against diseases and environmental stress as compared to the

traditional cotton.

First Bt Cotton Grown in PakistanCotton is known as white gold and is important cash crop of Pakistan accounting for 8.2 % of

agricultural product and 3.2 % of GDP. Two third of the country’s export is from the products

made from cotton like textile and ready made clothes constituting about 2.5 billion dollars in

national economy. Millions of farmers depend on crop and millions of workers are employed

for weaving of clothes and making of textile products and their export. Despite being the worlds

4th largest cotton producer and 3rd largest raw cotton exporter Pakistan still has to import

around 2 million bales of cotton to meet the growing need of cotton in local textile mills, hence

Pakistan needs to improve its yield of cotton per acre. Reasons for low yield of cotton are pest

attacks, poor irrigation and shortage of good variety of seeds. Agriculture biotechnology helps

in providing people better quality crops but it has its owns pros and cons. Genetically

engineered crops provides solution to many problems that are faced by the farmers as it

improves and gives strengths to the plant to fight the environmental stresses. In Pakistan there

are two major types of pests that are damaging cotton crops

1. Sucking

2. Chewing

Sucking pest could be easily controlled by the use of strong pesticides till some extent. But

controlling chewing pests is very difficult these pests are commonly known as “sundies”, in

Pakistan American, army, pink and spotted sundies are commonly the cause of damage to

cotton fields leading to the decreased production of cotton. Disaster resulting from the cotton

leaf curl virus (CLCV) spread in Punjab and Sindh pushed institutes of Pakistan like Pakistan

Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), National Institute for Biotechnology and Genetic

Engineering (NIBGE) and Nuclear Institute of Agriculture and Biology (NIAB) in Faisalabad, and

National center of Excellence in Molecular Biology (NCEMB) at Punjab University Lahore to cope

with such problems. Large amount of manpower and financial resources were used by the

government of Pakistan to produce local GM variety of cotton. By enacting the Biosafety Rules

in April 2005 major obstacles have been surpassed, these rules presents legal requirements for

import, export, transport, and handling of biological agents, genetic engineering organisms or

vectors, seeds, crops and foods. Normally it takes 2-3 years for proper assessment for Biotech

crops before it is commercialized. Whereas, PAEC had sought special permission in 1997 from

the Ministry of Environment under “Voluntary Code of Conduct for release of GMO into the

environment” prepared by NIBGE and then it conducted, checked many safety tests on various

cotton species containing gene of GMO called Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a bacterium which is

deadly to “Sundies”. Bt cotton was grown in many places of southern punjab and gave positive

results. Germination of Bt cotton ranged from 65%-85% , although attack of chewing pests was

greatly reduced but no prominent effect was seen in case sucking pests as the attack of sucking

pests were equivalent in Bt cotton and non Bt cotton. Bt cotton was also better at tolerating

environmental stress like heat and CLCV was also not observed in Bt cotton. Bt cotton varieties

yielded more per acre as compared to non Bt cotton varieties, an average of 23-28 maund (1

Maund = 40 Kg) per acres as compared to 17-20 maund to traditional cotton varieties. In Bt

cotton crop average number of cotton Bolls per plant were 120 while average Boll weight was

approximately 1.75 grams including seeds and number of plants per acre were as

recommended by the department of agriculture. The economical gain by using Bt cotton per

acre was more than Rs. 3,000 at the market sale price of Rs. 1100/ Maund. In Pakistan average

cotton grower has 10 acres of land, such increase in small income/ acre would improve his life’s

quality. Crops review from different independent sources suggests that Bt cotton varities

increase the yield in Punjab by 5 % and in Sindh by 10-15%. The unapproved Bt cotton varieties

are have serious challenges in Pakistan. The approved Bt cotton have proven themselves

resistant against major bollworms and potentially have reduced the number of pesticides

sprays, they are eco friendly and give more yield per acre. However there is a small problem

with its size of bolls and time taken for maturity.

Farmers should only use the varieties which have been approved by government, the seed of Bt

cotton varieties are dependent on climatic changes. So it may not be appropriate for some

regions to produce satisfactory results, like under high temperature days and nights the bolls

may fall off. Bt varieties does not provide immunity against army sundies, so spray is necessary

if the crop is to be saved. Proper amount of Bt toxin “Cry-protein” is important in each Bt seed,

if we keep growing the same Bt seeds over time the proper amount of Bt toxin will be reduced

and pests will develop resistance against Bt toxin.

In 2014 High court Lahore put ban on 30 different varieties of Bt cotton. In 2015 the expected

target of achieving 20 million bales of cotton was not achieved but rather failed to even get

near the target by 10 million bales. This was mostly due to poor knowledge of Bt cotton and its

poor practice and rather than focusing on improving the home grown cotton efforts and money

is wasted on buying imported GM varieties of cotton. GM seeds of worth 2.4 million dollars

were imported from the china and were sown in 800 acres. However these also failed to deliver

the expected results. PARC officials said that seeds were substandard. Farmers were

disappointed in this because of price and yield, so they discarded the use of many Bt cotton

varieties, the major reason is that there is no solution for CLCV which could only be controlled

by using number of strong pesticide spray which ultimately are burden for farmers.

Sugarcane Sugar cane is important cash crop of Pakistan. It is very important for the production of sugar

and its related products, sugar industry of Pakistan plays important role in the economy of the

country, it accounts for 0.8% of the GDP. During 2013-2014 it earned 236.8 $ million foreign

exchange. It was sown at 1175 thousand hectares during 2013-2014. Pakistan is the worlds 4 th

largest grower of sugarcane yet its production is very low. The sugar consumption Pakistan is

25.83 kg per capita consumption per year, whereas in India it is 14 kg, Bangladesh 10 kg and

China 11 kg. Pakistan has 81 sugar mills with annual crushing capacity of over 6.1 million tones.

Sugar industries are mostly located in rural areas of Punjab, Sindh and KPK. To improve the

yield of sugarcane, Sugar cane Research Institute Faisalabad has released a number of varieties

since its establishment. Shakarganj Research Institute Jhang has also an active variety selection

programme and has evolved one variety as SPSG26 however SPF 338 gained popularity and

spread at fast rate. SPF 234 has been a major variety of Southern Punjab and covered area to

90-95% raising sugar mills recovery to over 10.5%.

These biotech varieties of sugarcane can have many benefits like

They reduce the manufacture cost of sugar.

Milling and processing losses are minimized.

Increase in overall recovery in a factory.

Increased sugar production efficiency.

Sugar recoveries are increased with increase in total sugar production.

But due certain reasons like lack of financial resources no Biotech sugarcane is grown and no

biotech variety has been approved. The government is still focusing on improving the

agricultural method like proper use of weedicides and pesticides, improving irrigation system

for sugar cane, proper use of farm manure and applying right amount and type of fertilizers.

The recommended amount of farm manure for sugar cane growth is 3-4 tractor trolleys. Most

of the growers only use nitrogenous fertilizers while others use unbalanced amount of N and P.

The use of K is almost negligible in cane crop. It is very important to use proper doses of

balanced fertilizers to obtain the maximum yield of cane crop. Department of Agriculture Sindh

recommended the fertilizer doses of 200-300 kg, 100-125 kg P202 and 125-175 kg, K20 per

hectare and 4 bags of urea per acre.

Status of Maize in PakistanMaize is very important crop it is used both for earning cash and as staple food. In Pakistan corn

is grown on an area of 1115 thousand hectares in 2013-2014 weighting about 4527 thousand

tonnes contributing about 0.4% of GDP. More land is used as the land for cotton is being

brought in the production of maize. Corn is very rich source of vitamins, minerals, proteins and

starch. The starch extracted from the maize is used to make corn syrup which has numerous

applications. It can be used as biomass fuel for the production of ethanol. Hybrid maize has the

ability to produce 12 tonnes of maize grains per hectare. Important hybrids available in Pakistan

include High corn-8288, NK-8001, X-2276, Monsanto-6525, Monsanto-919, Pioneer-3335, YHD-

555 and FSH-523. Maize is still grown in major parts of the country, it is grown in two seasons 1.

Kharif and 2. Rabi .

Most of the varieties of maize are imported and biotech maize is still used in many parts of the

country. There are some problems that needs the urgent attention of government.

ConclusionIn Pakistan biotech crops are not favoured because of the poor knowledge of GMOs of farmers

and weak system and poor performance of agricultural institutes in making their own biotech

species according to the climatic environment of the country. More over the health and

environmental problems that GMOs creates just seem to much of a bargain to be used.

Although government of Pakistan has approved the commercialization of biotech crops in

Pakistan after the meeting of national biosafety center with technical advisory committee.

Government needs to invest in agricultural institutes properly and guide the farmers about the

potential benefits of biotech crops.

References

http://www.pakissan.com/english/advisory/biotechnology/

first.bt.cotton.grown.in.pakistan.shtml

(http://www.pabic.com.pk/2016/03/30/government-of-pakistan-approved-commercialization-of-

biotech-crops/)

(http://edu.par.com.pk/wiki/sugarcane/)

(http://edu.par.com.pk/wiki/maize/)

(http://www.isaaa.org/gmapprovaldatabase/approvedeventsin/default.asp?

CountryID=PK&Country=Pakistan)

(http://biologydecoded.com/gm-crops-and-pakistan/)

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_crops)

(Waris Ali Gabol, 2012)

African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 11(12), pp. 2807-2813, 9 February, 2012 Genetically

modified organisms (GMOs) in Pakistan