The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA) has released its 2018 Brief, with the news that Nigeria is the first country in the world to approve Bt cowpea. This was disclosed during Nigeria Science Café and the launch of the 2018 Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops in Abuja on Thursday. The Café was jointly organised by ISAAA, VIRCA Plus and Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB). The ISAAA AfriCenter Director, Dr Margaret Karembu, who presented the report, commended Nigeria’s progress in biotech crop development and adoption. She also noted that the country is a leader in agricultural technology approvals…
Author: Abdallah el-Kurebe
A Professor of Chemistry with the University of Ilorin, Mr Joshua Obaleye says his team hasld discovered anti-malaria, anti-cancer and anti-tuberculosis drugs that can be mass-produced to save lives. According to him, the team which he heads, had tested numerous world-class metal compounds from his laboratory for the treatment of various diseases. Obaleye said studies show that when a metal is attached with a pharmaceutical, it increases the efficacy of the drug. The don, who is also the President, America Chemical Society, Nigeria Chapter, and Chairman, Nigeria Chemical Society, Kwara State Chapter, said that he had no funding to commercialise…
The ‘Guidelines on the Nagoya Protocol for CGIAR Research Centers’ have been developed to help genebanks understand the legal requirements of moving plant genetic resources around the world. The movement of plant genetic resources between countries is governed by a veritable alphabet soup of treaties and agreements: ITPGRFA, CBD and SMTA for a start. But some agreements are such a mouthful that they’ve proved impossible to condense into acronyms. So, the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity is, simply, the CBD’s Nagoya Protocol. “Sometimes CGIAR…
The Rice Compact of the African Development Bank-funded project on Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) is paving the way for rice transformation in sub-Saharan Africa by promoting locally-adapted high-yielding hybrid rice varieties developed by the Africa Rice Center (AfricaRice).One such trailblazer is AR051H, which is the first hybrid rice variety released by the Senegalese Institute of Agricultural Research (ISRA) in Senegal under the name ISRIZ-9 in 2017. With high yield potential of 11-13 t/ha, long slender grains and good milling quality, ISRIZ-9, is aromatic, a trait that is highly appreciated by Senegalese consumers.As a result of heterosis (hybrid vigor),…
The co-sponsors of the Ebola therapeutics trial in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have announced advances that will bring patients a better chance of survival. Two out of the four drugs being tested are more effective in treating Ebola. Moving forward, these are the only drugs that future patients will be treated with. Details of the changes are available in this WHO/NIAID/INRB release.This WHO initiative is the first-ever multi-drug randomized control trial aimed at evaluating the safety and efficacy of four drugs used for treatment of Ebola patients. Initially developed as a multi-outbreak, multi-country study, PALM (“Together save lives”)…
President Muhammadu Buhari has assented to the National Biosafety Management Agency (Amendment) Act, 2019, with a view to preventing any adverse effect to human health and environment in the country. The Senior Special Assistant to the President on the National Assembly (Senate), Sen. Ita Enang, confirmed this development in a statement in Abuja on Wednesday. Enang said the bill amended the National Biosafety Management Agency Act No. 20, 2015 to enlarge the scope of application of the Act by including the emerging aspects of modern biotechnology and biosecurity in the country. The amended bill seeks to cover gene drive, gene…
By Jon Cohen If Gao Caixia were a farmer, she might be spread a little thin. Down the hall from her office at a branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) here in Beijing, seeds from a strain of unusually soft rice and a variety of wheat with especially fat grains and resistance to a common fungus sprout in a tissue culture room. A short stroll away, wild tomato plants far hardier than domestic varieties but bearing the same sweet fruit crowd a greenhouse, along with herbicide-resistant corn and potatoes that are slow to brown when cut. In other…
A Nigerian PhD scholar with the University of Ilorin, Misitura Lawal-Arowona, under the supervision of Prof. Joshua Obaleye, has promised to tackle the menace of tuberculosis (TB), both in African countries as well as India. According to a report published in the Sunday Times of India, under a sandwich fellowship at Faculty of Science of The Maharaja Sayajirao University’ of Baroda, India, Misitura Lawal-Arowona, who works as a lecturer at Nigeria’s Kebbi State University has successfully developed metal attached anti-TB drug. This has improved the efficiency of the anti-TB drugs compared to normal drugs that are consumed globally. Nigeria is…
At last, solution has come the way of victims of snake bite as the African Centre of Excellence in Phytomedicine Research and Development, University of Jos in collaboration with the National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion, NOTAP on Wednesday unveiled the first indigenous and world first Anti—Snake vaccine called COVIP-Plus in Abuja The presentation took place at a national forum on promotion of Anti-Snake Venom (COVIP-Plus) for commercialization organised by NOTAP and ACEPRD held at Kanem Suit, Utako, Abuja. Snake bite is one of the most neglected public health issues that need critical interventions and the current treatment of…
University of Cape Town (UCT) researchers have collected clear evidence – over a 23 year period between 1976 and 1999 – that climate change is shrinking animals’ body sizes.