A Nigerian Scientist, Dr Andrew Illoh, has challenged critics of the technology of Genetic Modification (GM) to substantiate their claims with empirical evidence.
Iloh, Director, Biotechnology Advanced Research Centre, Sheda Science and Technology Complex, Abuja, said this in an interview on Friday in Abuja.
Iloh said it was normal for people to express their opinions on topical issues, but on matters relating to GMO, it was important to back such positions with scientific evidence.
The scientist said GMO was not the most controversial debate in Nigeria because in science there were many controversies.
He mentioned that the prominent scientist, Albert Einstein and others whose theories were controversial until properly understood and accepted.
“That’s the beauty of science, everybody has his or her own opinion about certain things, but you have to marshal out your opinion with empirical evidence.
“For us who are scientists, we’ve had our own scientific evidence to show about our work on genetic modification,’’ he said.
Iloh, who was reacting to the claim in some quarters that planting conventional seeds alongside GM seeds would stop the conventional seeds from growing, dismissed the claim as false and lacking scientific evidence.
He said another false claim was that after harvesting GM crop it would be impossible to plant the conventional seed again on the same soil.
“That’s not correct because even in my own laboratory, we planted beans; in fact we just harvested GM Cowpea alongside normal cowpea this planting season.
“Before we did that, we tested the soil to look at the soil microbial content and soil nutritional content.
“After harvesting, we also conducted soil nutritional test because of the controversy that when you plant you cannot plant again there, so, we tested the soil nutritional component and nothing happened.
“As a matter of fact, there were more pesticide residues on the non-GM cowpea because that is the ones we sprayed more pesticides on,’’ Iloh said.
The director of biotechnology advanced research, said they found more pesticide residues on the non-GM plants after carrying out potential of hydrogen (pH) analysis.
He also said that in comparison to the conventional seed, there was less pesticide application on the GM plant.
Iloh said that they realised more yield on the GM crop than the non-GM ones, which he said constituted empirical evidence to debunk some of the controversies surrounding GM technology.
“Everybody has the right to plant whatever he wants to plant, nobody is saying that we are forcing GM seeds down people’s throat.
“But the fact remains that as a farmer, if you see your neighbour having more yields, you will definitely go for that one that has more yields.
“Nobody is forcing anybody to plant GM seeds, so it doesn’t take away the traditional or local seeds that farmers normally plant,” he said.
The expert said the institute had developed community seed banks where communities store their local seeds.
“We try to keep these local seeds because there must be a reason why these communities over the years are planting and re-planting.
“As scientists we still keep them to use them to do different kinds of breeding practice,” Iloh said.
NAN
