By Muhammad Luqman
In contrast to Pakistan government’s efforts to discourage the commercial cultivation of Genetically Modified crops in this part of the world, the biotech crops across the globe have registered 113 times increase over the last 23 years with an accumulated area of 6.3 billion acres (2.5 billion hectares) under GM food and fibre crops .
According to annual report of The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), a total of 70 countries adopted biotech crops, 26 countries planted and 44 additional countries imported
The 191.7 million hectares of biotech crops were grown by 26 countries – 21 developing and 5 industrial countries. Developing countries grew 54% of the global biotech crop area compared to 46% for industrial countries.
An additional 44 countries (18 plus 26 EU countries) imported biotech crops for food, feed, and processing. Thus, a total of 70 countries in total have adopted biotech crops, according to the report for the year 2018.
The top five countries (USA, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, and India) planted 91% of the global biotech crop area of 191.7 million hectares.
The ISAAA 2018 Report on Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops is now out! Get the report here: https://t.co/FJMhKMHbHD #GMCrops2018 #ISAAAReport2018 pic.twitter.com/EeghRDyCyt
— ISAAA (@isaaa_org) August 22, 2019
The USA led the biotech crop planting in 2018 at 75 million hectares, followed by Brazil (51.3 million hectares), Argentina (23.9 million hectare), Canada (12.7 million hectares), and India (11.6 million hectares for a total of 174.5 million hectares, representing 91% of the global area. Thus, biotechnology benefitted more than 1.95 billion people in the five countries or 26% of the current world population of 7.7 billion.
Pakistan where only GMO cotton, also called BT cotton, is grown is 8th biggest biotech crop growing country in the world with 2.8 million hectares of land under such crops.
Despite adoption of GM technology in a big way in the cotton sector, Pakistan’s central government recently stopped the Punjab province’s government to discuss cases of genetically modified organism (GMO) maize seeds at a meeting ofPunjab Seed Council (PSC) that was held to decide whether to allow or disallow the commercial cultivation of biotech corn seed.
Pakistan has already clamped a ban on further trials of Genetically Modified (GM) maize for an unspecified period to what the officials say,avoid natural crop contamination that can subsequently hurt maize exports. All bio-safety licenses for the import and field trials of GM corn in the country have been suspended along with all related activities, according to PSC officials. After banning the import of f GM corn seeds and other associated activities, the government said trials of bio-engineered maize will eventually come to a standstill.
