The National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA) is set to introduce genome editing technology, an initiative of the African Union Development Agency-New Partnership for Africa’s Development (AUDA-NEPAD) Centre of Excellence in Science, Technology and Innovation (STI).
The Director-General of NABDA, Professor Abdullahi Mustapha disclosed this in Abuja, saying about seven selected African countries including Nigeria were involved in the AUDA-NEPAD initiative, while disclosing that the new technology came with numerous benefits including reduction in time frame for growth, mitigating climate change and less application of pesticides among others.
Genome editing is a technique that helps in precision agriculture, where targeted changes to DNA of a crop can be easily fixed, to enables the crop to actualize its optimal yield in making food crops more resilient to local environmental pressures, like climate, diseases and pest pressure.
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Mustapha pointed out that the country is ready for genome editing technology with the biosafety laws in place, explaining that it does not endanger nor harm the crop, and that it only repairs what was responsible for the crop’s impaired growth through its DNA.
“When used in agriculture, all the diseases bedevilling crops in the country, most especially crops of interest used as food and industrial raw materials are the ones being targeted. “When this has been achieved, the country is going to gain quite a lot in terms of food supply and agricultural raw materials for industrial development”.
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“With that, there would be wealth creation as employment opportunities shall be available for our teeming population of youths. “So, this technology is going to help in the area of providing the huge amount of crops that are going to be sufficient for these two purposes,’’ Mustapha said.
