LILONGWE: The Malawi Government has finally given Bunda College, located in the country’s capital Lilongwe, permission to conduct confined field trials on genetically modified (GM) cotton, after nearly three years of assessment.
Bunda College scientists and officials of the National Biosafety Regulatory Committee confirmed this at a stakeholders’ awareness meeting held in Lilongwe on Friday, November 4.
According to Professor Moses Kwapata, Principal of Bunda College, who chairs the trials committee, it will take at least three years for results of the research to come out. The approval was officially made on August 19, 2011.
The trials are aimed at coming up with bore worm resistant and herbicide tolerant cotton varieties.
The notion is that this variety, known as BT cotton in the scientific circles, will help farmers earn more as they will no longer be required to spray their crop up to eleven times as is the case now.
On the other hand the tolerance to herbicides means that farmers will have reduced workload because, instead of weeding, they just apply herbicides – chemicals that kill weeds in a garden. The conventional cotton varieties currently on the market would die if herbicides are applied to the field.
Professor Kwapata said, “So far we have identified the field where the trial will be conducted (at Bunda College), we have already started preparing the land in anticipation to be planted in December or early January this year.
“We also have initiated the process acquiring the seed from South Africa and we have already put up a team that will be looking at the trial site on a daily basis.
“And we hope that once this has been planted in the field, it will also provide the farmers and other stakeholders an opportunity to come and see and evaluate the trials. It will include BT cotton plots and conventional local cotton varieties so that people can compare the differences as with advance in seasons.
Caroline Theka, an environmental officer in the Environmental Affairs Department Biosafety Registration Office, said the trial at Bunda College will closely be monitored by the authorities.
Asked whether the trial approval delayed because of Malawi’s limited capacity to conduct safe genetic modification, she said, “Yes and no. Yes in the sense, as you know, this is a new technology…people are apprehensive and cautious as well – so the issues of taking it back and forth delayed.
“But also people weren’t just sure of what to do, so that took a bit of time, so we can say capacity, yes, and also its because of apprehension and conscious”.
She said the office of the National Biosafety Registrar will work with Bunda scientists from the time they will be importing the seed, as they plant it, to the time the results will be released as prescribed by standing procedures.
“We will have our own monitors who will be going there over time and again.”
The BT cotton to be tried at Bunda is already being grown in other African countries such as Burkina Faso and South Africa.
Scientists, however, have to test here to ascertain how it can perform in the Malawi environment.
The approval of the BT cotton trials comes at a time when Malawi is working on increasing cotton production to complement tobacco, whose prices have fallen drastically over the years, as the main foreign currency earner.
BT cotton is said to have the potential of producing four times higher than the conventional crop per hectare when well taken care of.
2010 was the 15th anniversary of commercialization of products of agricultural biotechnology worldwide with an excess of 1 billion hectares of land, eight times the size of South Africa, planted with genetically modified crops.
