25 July, 2008ISLAMABAD: The government has constituted a committee on Thursday to finalise a roadmap for introduction of new variety of Bt-Cotton that will lead to enhance cotton production in the country.

The committee will forward its recommendations within a week time to the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock, which will later on consult the stakeholders and will take final decision about introduction of latest technology of Bt-Cotton. Pakistan Central Cotton Committee (PCCC) and Monsanto— a multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation— are members of the committee, who will assess the over all situation relating to transfer of new technology, its value, productivity and reasonable price acceptable to the farming community.

The above decision was taken during a high level meeting held in MINFAL and officials of the Ministry, Planning Commission; representatives of Monsanto and private stakeholders attended the meeting.

Official, who attend the meeting told Daily Times that at present ‘Boll Guard’ having Gem-1 is used in Pakistan and the representative of Monsanto told the participants that the company has produced a new variety of Gem-2. The company wanted to introduce this technology in Pakistan along with other hybrids seeds, already used in other countries.

Monsanto representatives made presentation on new verities of Bt-Cotton including Gem-2, new varieties hybrid seeds.

Another official told this scribe that MINFAL officials insisted over reasonable price of Monsanto products because the farmers were unable to pay higher prices.

The government has already signed MoU with Monsanto for increasing the cotton production.

Cotton being a main cash crop and source of foreign exchange earning, the country witnessed a declined cotton production of 11.6 million bales against the target of 14.11 million bales in 2007-08 due to multiple factors. One of the main reasons of low cotton production is stated to the use of fake Bt cottonseed while other factors were the attack of mealy bug, CLC, paucity of water etc.

Bt cotton is an economic incentive for the poor farmers due to lower usage of pesticide and lesser damage to the crop. Bt cotton is developed by Genetic Engineering techniques and eight countries commercially grow it including USA, Australia, China and India.

Some Bt cotton varieties may have lower expression of Bt toxin proteins and can lead to the development of resistance in chewing pest. In Pakistan, experts said most of the Bt cotton varieties were marketed with wrong notation of resistance to all pests. In some instances Bt cottonseed was mixed with non-Bt cottonseed, having negative affects on the yield.