The National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA) has called on Nigeria and other African countries to adopt the use of technology in order to attain the yield potential of legumes and grains to enable them compete with other parts of the world.
The Director-General of NABDA, Professor Abdullahi Mustapha disclosed this in Abuja at the exchange program on agricultural biotechnology between Nigeria and Ghana, pointing out that while farmers in America, the West and Asia are getting over 10 tons per hectare for maize, Nigerian and other African farmers are still struggling to attain four tons per hectare.
NABDA set up programs and policies for biotechnology utilization, research, and development in priority areas of food and agriculture, health, industry, environment and other strategic sectors for national development.
The board helps to promote, coordinate and deploy cutting edge biotechnology research and development activities, to ensure Nigeria becomes self-reliant in the development and application of biotechnology-based products and services.
Professor Mustapha explained that biotechnology has proven its potentials to address various breeding limitations associated with conventional breeding, citing how cowpea breeders have tried to find solutions to pod borer for many years without success and how the new variety called Pod Borer Resistant (PBR) cowpea has taken care of that.
The Executive Director of African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), Dr Canisius Kanangiri, represented by the AATF representative for West Africa, Dr Francis Onyekachi said Africa has been regarded as the region with the biggest potential to benefit from biotech, adding that Nigeria has advanced so much in biotechnology as a focal point in Africa.
“Everyone in Africa comes to see what’s going on in Nigeria. Ghana is also advancing in that area and that is why we must continue to engage and bring together stakeholders to share experiences and chart the future together on communicating agricultural biotechnology in the continent”, Kanangiri noted.
