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Post Tagged with: "cotton"
Biotechnology enters mainstream agri-production in Asia
Publication — The News (Pakistan) Author — By Munawar Hasan Date — April 15, 2012 Website — www.thenews.com.pk SUBIC BAY, PHILIPPINES: Asian countries are increasingly adopting biotechnology for enhancing agriculture production. This emerged at a session organised by CropLife Asia and Biotech Coalition of the Philippines as part of Sixth Pan-Asia Farmers Exchange Programme at [...]
Fudan scientists breed long-fiber cotton
Publication — Shanghai Daily Author — By Liang Yiwen Date — April 5, 2012 Website — www.shanghaidaily.com SHANGHAI scientists have developed China’s own genetically modified cotton which has longer fibers and is hoped to help reduce the country’s imports of high-end cotton, Fudan University announced today. Yang Jinshui, life sciences professor at Fudan University and [...]
Bt crop doubles India’s cotton output
Publication — Business Standard (India) Date — March 13, 2012 Website — http://business-standard.com Biotech (Bt) crop technology has more than doubled India’s cotton production, a government report card said today, calling for more such revolutions. “By 2011-12, almost 90 per cent of cotton area is covered under Bt cotton and production has more than doubled. [...]
S.Africa GM crop area hit record in 2011: report
Publication — Reuters Africa Date — March 8, 2012 Website — http://af.reuters.com PRETORIA (Reuters) – South Africa’s genetically modified (GM) crop area increased 100,000 hectares to a record 2.3 million hectares in 2011 from 2.2 million hectares in the year before, an industry report showed on Thursday. The land area cultivated under the staple maize was [...]
Precision farming yields many gains
China Daily March 8, 2012 By Robert Paarlberg The Chinese government’s No 1 central document released in February attached greatimportance to high-tech agriculture, and it is a hot topic during this year’s annual sessions ofthe National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Everyone thinks high-tech farming means biotechnology, but it actually goes far beyond that.Biotech seeds are now being upstaged in the United States by a variety of ”precision farming”technologies, such as drip irrigation and GPS guidance systems, that offer savings in the useof water and chemical inputs. On big farms in the US four out of five tractors are now equipped with GPS systems that ”auto-steer” the equipment in perfectly straight lines. With differential correction signals, thesesystems can tell a machine exactly where it is in a field, down to 1 square meter. This in turnallows on-board computers to access GIS mapping data and instruct the machine to applyfertilizer or lime at differential rates, location by location. This eliminates both under-applicationthat can hold down yields and over-application that wastes money and pollutes theenvironment. GPS positioning and sensing technologies also allow farmers to save on water, by instructingmachines to deliver water only where the seeds have been or will be planted, and in responseto actual soil moisture conditions at the depth of the plant roots. Computerized drip irrigationsystems are even more precise, and lasers are now used to level fields so as to eliminateirrigation water runoff. An earlier innovation in precision farming was no-till or reduced-till planting. In the 1970s,farmers learned how to seed unplowed fields, to minimize soil disturbance. This helpedconserve moisture and sequester carbon, while saving on diesel fuel. A second dimension ofprecision arrived in the 1990s, when seeds were engineered to resist a chemical herbicidenamed glyphosate. Farmers who planted these seeds could control weeds without multiple pre-emergence chemical sprays and without energy-intensive mechanical cultivation. As a paralleldevelopment, seeds were also engineered to contain a protein that the larvae of insects couldnot digest. Farmers who planted these Bt seeds could reduce insecticide sprays and controlpests with far greater precision. In fields planted with Bt maize or Bt cotton, only the insectsactually eating the plant suffer any harm. This kind of high-tech precision farming has multiple benefits. Since the 1990s when many ofthese techniques were first introduced, the annual rate of growth of total factor productivity inUS agriculture has accelerated from 1.49 percent to 1.91 percent, reducing food costs whilebringing more profits to farmers. Much of this new productivity has come from less wastefulinput use. Total fertilizer use and total pesticide use have both declined in American agriculturesince the 1980s, even as total production volume increased by roughly 45 percent. In theOrganization for Economic Cooperation and Development world as a whole, excess nitrogenfertilizer use in farming has declined by 17 percent since 1990. This has also been good for theenvironment. Chinese farmers who face water scarcity and who often damage the environment with too muchnitrogen use might take an interest in these new precision-farming techniques, which do nothave to be capital intensive. In some cases China’s farms will have no problem adopting these high-tech solutions. Forexample, China has been planting genetically engineered Bt cotton seeds since 1997. Thesegenetically engineered varieties of cotton have given even small farmers in China a 10 percentincrease in yield per hectare, along with a 60 percent reduction in the spraying of insecticideson cotton. China is now the largest producer of cotton in the world, with 69 percent of its cottonacres now planted with high-tech Bt varieties. In 2009, China also approved the planting ofgenetically engineered Bt rice, and in June 2008, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told theChinese Academy of Science, to solve the food problem, we have to rely on big science andtechnology measures, rely on biotechnology, rely on GM (Genetic Modification).” In other cases, China might want to consider low-tech solutions. The machinery used in the USto apply fertilizer will be too expensive for China’s much smaller farms, but other new methodsfor applying fertilizer with greater precision and less waste are easily affordable. For example inrice cultivation, a new method called fertilizer deep placement replaces spraying urea onflooded paddy fields, which leads to runoff, with the placement of solid ”briquettes” of fertilizerdirectly into the soil close to the root zone of the rice plant. This technique, currently beingscaled up in Bangladesh, can reduce fertilizer use by 40 percent while increasing crop yields by15 percent. Greater precision in modern farming raises a farm’s income, brings down food prices, and isgood for the environment. China will want to move toward precision farming using its ownunique mix of solutions, based on both high-tech and low-tech methods, including bothconventional and biotech seeds. The new Chinese farming model that emerges can leadagriculture in all of Asia toward a more prosperous, environmentally sustainable future. The author is B. F. Johnson professor of political science, Wellesley College, and adjunctprofessor of public policy, Harvard Kennedy School.
Neighbours set for a BT harvest, what about India?
Economic Times (India) February 20, 2012 Nidhi Nath Srinvas In the next 24 months, genetically modified food crops will enter India’s neighbourhood. And that will trigger changes in our own agriculture, like it or not. Between now and 2014, Bangladesh will introduce BT brinjal; Pakistan will introduce biotech corn; Philippines, that already grows biotech corn, [...]
The Visit of Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping
The visit to Iowa last week by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who will become President, highlighted the importance of agricultural trade for both nations. Having a Chinese President with first-hand knowledge of agriculture may help keep some agricultural trade and food security issues from being caught up in wider trade policy differences at a [...]
DuPont, an international seed company praises buoyancy in Indian agriculture
The Economic Times (India) February 14, 2012 NEW DELHI: Praising India for making fast strides in agriculture, a leading international developer and supplier of advance plant genetics has said it aims to boost output of six staple crops, including rice, cotton and sunflower, in the country through advance seed varieties. “India is in top 10 tiers for [...]
Now available: Global status of GM crops for 2011 from ISAAA
The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA) has released it’s annual update, the “Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops: 2011″ authored by Clive James.
Now, GM crops for arid land
Financial Chronicle (India) January 16, 2012 By Sangeetha G. Agricultural biotech company Krishidhan Seeds is in the process of developing genetically modified plants of four crops, which can absorb moisture from the air in drought conditions. After completing all regulatory trials, Krishidhan expects to be ready with the seeds by 2016 and to fund the research [...]
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