Publication: Business Recorder
Date: Monday, July 11, 2005

All three countries Pakistan, India and USA are building closer science ties with each other in a range of fields spanning crops biotechnology to overcome its agriculture issues. Pakistan stands to gain tremendously from the tripartite planning meeting on agricultural biotechnology held at Lahore at the end of May 2005.

It will be our first "umbrella agreement" on biotech science with any country in the region. This will serve as an oversight panel for the tripartite collaborative project on pro-poor and pro-nature agricultural biotechnology.

The following decisions were taken in the first meeting.

The collaborative research programme will be titled "India - Pakistan - US science academies collaborative research programme on agricultural biotechnology"

The initial duration of the collaborative research programme will be of 5 years, beginning from 1 January, 2006

PRIORITIES IN RESEARCH AND HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT:

a. Breeding crops for tolerance/ resistance to abiotic stresses, with particular reference to drought and salinity

b. Risk and safety assessment

c. Human resource development in advanced technologies with particular reference to techniques relevant to the collaborative research programme

d. Technology sharing in areas of mutual benefit

The project proposal will contain a budget, indicating the funds needed for common and differentiated research responsibilities under the collaborators framework.

The project preparation team will finalise a detailed project proposal by the end of August 2005.

Each academy will seek funds from appropriate local funding agencies for meeting the expenses of the work to be carried out in the respective countries.

The three academies approach international donor agencies for meeting expenses connected with common activities like capacity building, technology sharing and meetings of the oversight panel and steering committee.

The fund raising strategy will be finalised at the meeting of the Steering Committee to be held at National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS), New Delhi, in September 2005.

The Governor Punjab General Khalid Maqbool pledged full support to this initiative. He expressed interest in organising a women's biotechnology park near Lahore, on the lines of the women's biotechnology park in Chennai.

It is worth knowing that water logging and salinity are causing the abandonment of irrigated croplands in Pakistan, India, Iraq and Egypt. Pakistan had already made a good beginning in evolution of some species of trees, fodder and crops having economic worth through application of nuclear and molecular techniques, which are resistant to salinity like Acacia, Kallar grass, Sporobolus, Salicornia, and Jojoba.

Through the use of modern technology, already 25,000 acres of saline lands in the country were being put to use through Farmers Participatory Programme under a central government project worth Rs 178 million.

Dr Khalid J Chowdhry, President, Federation of Asian Biotech Associations, (FABA), Pakistan, said that NAAS will help to organise a get-together between Pakistan and Indian leaders in biotechnology business enterprises in pharmaceutical, medical and agricultural biotechnology.

The aim will be to promote joint enterprises in Pakistan and India.

India's renowned agricultural scientist, M S Swaminathan said that combination of biotechnology with conventional system of crop improvement is imperative to give a quantum jump to the farm production in this part of the world; he added biotechnology was not against the concept of organic farming, where crops could be grown naturally without the use of chemicals.

A tripartite group of senior scientists from the US, India and Pakistan has been working on agricultural biotechnology to formulate a collaborative strategy to fight against salinity, drought and other related problems. Biotechnology, which is expected to surpass Information Technology as the new engine of the global economy; it is expected to alter healthcare, agriculture, commercial and industrial products.

Global success for Pakistani biotechnology will largely depend on creating the lowest cost base for innovation.

It is therefore imperative to evolve fiscal and regulatory policies that support capital-intensive research and manufacturing, long gestation time for product commercialisation and investments in patenting and technology licensing and close collaboration between biotech player institutes and countries.

It is worthy to note that there is no national biotech policy; in April 2005 Government of Pakistan approved its Biosafety Rules and Pakistan Atomic energy Commission (PAEC) has provided 40,000.00 Kg basic seed of transgenic cotton varieties "IR-FH-901", "IR-NIBGE-2", "IR-CIM-448" and "IR-CIM-443" to few seed companies for its multiplication and sale; these companies were tightly screened and evaluated by PAEC on the bases of their capacity to follow biosafety rules.