Pakistan
March 12, 2014

Prime Minister on January 16, 2014 constituted a committee comprising Secretary Textile division, Secretary Law and Secretary Climate Change and directed them to hold a meeting of National Bio-Safety Committee (NBC) to grant approval for commercialization of cotton seeds.
Official sources revealed that the National Bio-Safety Committee (NBC) is likely to grant approval to the long awaited 15 cotton varieties with Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) for commercialization.

They added that certified cotton seed helps in better production and also helpful for cultivation in the upcoming season. Pakistan being a signatory to the international Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety has to regulate the GMO through establishing a Bio-safety system.

The NBC and Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) of Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (PEPA) have responsibility to evaluate, regulate and monitor the GMO for lab or field research and their commercial scale production or marketing.

They emphasized that the regulatory process required to test and approve the GMOs crops, currently only transgenic crop commercially cultivated in Pakistan is cotton and eight Bt varieties and one cotton Hybrid were approved by Punjab Seed Council (PSC) in April 2010 and commercialization certificate was granted by the NBC.

In February 2012, the PSC provisionally approved 8 BT varieties (Tarzen-1, MNH-886, NS-141, FH-114, IR-NIBGE-3, CIM-598, Sitara-009, A-One) subject to the grant of commercialization certificate from the NBC and TAC has to clear cases before consideration in the NBC.

The Bt Cotton varieties in Pakistan which were granted certificate for three years (now expired) included IR-3701, Neelum-121, FH-113, Sitara-008, MG-6, Ali Akbar-703, Ali Akbar 802, IR-1524 and GN Hybrid-2085.

Website: http://www.pabic.com.pk

Published: March 12, 2014