President for promoting GM crops

New Delhi, Sep 1 (UNI) President APJ Abdul Kalam today said promoting of genetic engineering technology for crops could help the country to tackle problems of low productivity and also frequent drought conditions, low temperature spells and lot of salt affected areas.

There is need to search for genes to overcome these problems by developing stress tolerant and pest-resistant crop varieties. The pest resistant genes for various biotic stresses can be a big boon to the farmers and boost agriculture production substantially, said the President while delivering a key note address at a symposium on "Search of New Genes', commemorating birth cenetenary of eminent agriculutral scientist late B P Pal here.

'Plant Genomics' is the new emerging area of research which could be useD as bio-factories producing useful proteins, therapeutic molecules, nutritional compositions, and stress tolerant varieties to meet the current and futuristic requirement of the society in eco-environment friendly manner.

Besides, the genetic engineering could help in adding to the crops more Vitamin A, Iodine, Calcium and Iron as to supplement diet.

There is a continuous reduction in the reserve of fossil fuel in the planet. India produces only 25 per cent of its total requirement and could reduce the import bill by producing more biofuels by applying biotechnology on crops.

The 'genome' of the plant with 'metabolome' is the emerging field of functional genomics, a successor of gene, which finds large scale application in medicinal and aromatic plants to develop designer crops that would specifically produce the drug molecules and accumulate them in large quantities for use by pharma industry.

UNI JSS VJ DB2048