An agricultural biotechnologist, Dr Rose Gidado, has expressed optimism that cultivation of herbicide tolerant (Bt) soybean would improve farmer productivity and strengthen the nation’s economy.
Gidado was responding to questions on Wednesday, in Abuja, on prospects of herbicide tolerant soybean cultivation in Nigeria.
According to her, soybean is highly nutritious, also an industrial crop that has the ability to fix nitrogen and herbicide tolerant soybean would help to reduce drudgery for farmers.
She stated that the difficulties farmers often faced in its cultivation could be attributed to weed invasion, which grows to choke it, among other setbacks, resulting in poor yield.
Gidado said this situation greatly affected and hampered the production of the crop, which has a wonderful value chain.
“There is nothing about soybean that is not useful, from its grains, the leaves which serve as feed and fodder,’’ she said.
The biotechnologist pointed out that soybean was used in making condiments for human consumption, for poultry feeds, as well as for fisheries.
However, she regretted that due to insect invasiveness and other challenges, its production in the country had been low, such that the country had been relying heavily on its importation, thereby making it quite expensive.
Gidado assured that in promoting its soil cultivation, scientists were looking at those challenges and trying to mitigate them through the use of innovative technologies such as genetic modification.
She said for such a crop, with its numerous advantages, genetic modification was the best way to go, as it improve farmer productivity in addition to making the grains more readily available for planting.
Gidado attributed the high cost of soybean grains to shortfall in production, as a result of reliance on importation.
“If we have an improved variety in the country, importation will go down and foreign exchange will be boosted.
“The poultry, fisheries and farmers as well as the nation’s economy shall benefit in terms of turnout in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), ‘’ Gidado said.
Dr Rose Gidado, Deputy Director at the National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA), is also the Country Coordinator, Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB).
