Agricultural experts are making a case for adopting agricultural biotechnology as crop production remains insufficient for both local consumption and exportation yet Rwanda’s economy relies on agriculture.
Plant or agricultural bio-technology can be defined as the use of tissue culture and genetic engineering techniques to produce genetically modified plants that exhibit new or improved desirable characteristics.
Bio-technology has helped to make both insect pest control and weed management safer and easier while safeguarding crops against devastating diseases.
According to the recent publication "Plant biotechnology: A key tool to improve crop production in Rwanda”, intensive and appealing discussions about agriculture economic importance, production of improved crops and the use of all necessary resources to ameliorate agricultural production need more attention.
Adoption of bio-technology would among other things see Rwanda and other regional countries go a step forward in achieving free-disease plants for high agricultural productivity.
Use of plant biotechnology has to be highly considered as a means to solve some agri-related problems since its benefits can speed up the economy and stimulate the research processes,” they said.
According to the researchers, Rwanda’s farming suffers shortage of quality planting materials due to few production companies or organizations of good quality seeds.
The use of biotechnology tools has been found relevant to protect seed distributed among farmers, biological control agents and testing varieties of seed identity and purity before their distribution are primary tools that can benefit African farmers.
In this context, it is recommended for developing African countries to start thinking about pursuing gene transfer to breed-disease and introduction of pest resistant varieties in order to meet the future food’s needs.
This calls for increased research is needed to identify and use suitable domestic breeding techniques for popular varieties in the country, and this should be widespread to other crops since the only crops receiving research attention are common beans, bananas, cassava and sweet potatoes.
With the growing demand of food, unreliable weather patterns countries on the continent have to seek ways to use bio-technology to achieve free-disease and climate resilience plants for high agricultural productivity. This requires increased investment in research by both government and private sector actors on multiple aspects including best approaches to introduce bio-technology for farmers and consumers.