By JIMOH BABATUNDE

The Nigeria Chapter Coordinator, Open Forum on Agriculture Biotechnology in Africa (OFAB), Mrs. Rose Gidado, has said that Nigerian farmers and the country stand to gain from the adoption of biotechnology in the country.

She explained that the benefits of biotechnology will be evenly spread among biotech companies, farmers and consumers, adding that it will immensely contribute to agricultural productivity.

Speaking as part of a panelist at the AGRA Innovate conference in Lagos during the week on GM/Hybrid seed technology: innovations, potential applications and benefits for Nigeria, Gidado said Genetic Modification Technology is an important instrument for plant breeders.

“GM technology makes it easier for the breeder to transfer genes of desired traits from unrelated specie of crop to an unrelated specie solving problems that can’t be solved in conventional breeding.”

While explaining that Gm technology will make quality seeds available to farmers, she said biotechnology creates opportunities; increases crop yields; reduces losses to insects, pests and diseases; post harvest storage problems and enhances the nutritional value of some crops.

Mrs. Gidado said in the case of BT cotton which is developed for insect resistance , it makes it possible for farmers to reduce the number of space cultivated up to 66% , “because the number of pesticides applied reduced from six to two. If you are using BT cotton, you can just use two sprays and that has reduced cost for you and the labour has also reduced.”

She added that resistance to abiotic stress, such as drought and high soil salinity, resulting in increased crop production and empowerment of youths in rural areas are other accruable benefits from application of biotechnology.

The OFAB coordinator said countries like Burkina Faso and Brazil are already reaping the benefit of embracing biotechnology as their farmers are smiling to banks, “the income of Nigerian farmers will increase, like in Burkina Faso where BT cotton has been embraced, the income of farmers   has increased there by 51 per cent, and the farmers make a lot of money. Burkina Faso makes $1.2b yearly and Brazil $2b yearly from biotechnology.

She added that the hectare cultivated by farmers in those countries continues to increase year by year and more farmers all over the world are now beginning to adopt the technology.

As she expresses hope that the bill on biosafety before the national Assembly will be pass very soon, Gidado said the bill is a safety valve for harnessing the potential of modern technology as it will proscribe procedure for the application of technology.

She noted that the fear by many about the application of Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) will be taken care by the bill before the National Assembly for passage.

Also speaking at the event, Prince Emma Ajayi, CEO, Swiss Biostadt, said there has been lot of misunderstanding on what biotech is all about, “this has made it difficult for Nigeria not to rectify the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety which it has signed.”

He said the inability of Nigeria to rectify the protocol is making the country to lose out from the maize and cotton market, “it is only Biotech that can make Nigeria benefit from these markets as what we are talking about here is growing more food with less money and labour.”