Researchers Assessing Safety and Benefits of GM Cotton in Burkina Faso

Burkinabe Agronomist Discusses Field Trials in New Online Video

St. Louis, MO -- In a new online video and podcast appear today, Dr. Ouola Traoré, an agriculturalist and arch of the affection affairs at the Institute for the Environment and Agricultural Research (INERA), discusses the acreage trials and evaluations that accept been conducted back 2003 to appraise if transgenic affection crops accommodate advantages to farmers in Burkina Faso.

It’s accurate that we accept some varieties that are productive, but we aswell accept to use a lot of pesticides aboriginal to amusement the seed, again to assure the plants until they are around mature At present, the amount of insecticide analysis agency that generally we can’t be aggressive internationally. The abstracts are advised – with transgenic affection – to see what the advantages are. … It’s to see if there is some added addition to aggressive the assorted pests chemically I’m absorbed in giving the best accessible advice to the producer. And it’s not in the absorption of others, but in my own absorption – as a scientist It’s in the absorption of the country, in the absorption of the producers – because I myself am the son of a ambassador – to back to them the appropriate information. Burkina Faso in Western Africa is one of the atomic countries in the apple with 90 percent of the citizenry affianced in affluence agriculture. Where possible, farmers are bearing affection as a banknote crop, yet are affected to common aridity and insect infestations.

“It’s accurate that we accept some varieties that are productive, but we aswell accept to use a lot of pesticides aboriginal to amusement the seed, again to assure the plants until they are around mature,” explains Dr. Traoré. “At present, the amount of insecticide analysis agency that generally we can’t be aggressive internationally.”

GM insect-protected affection crops accommodate a protein from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that protects the plants from specific lepidopteron insect pests.

“The abstracts are advised – with transgenic affection – to see what the advantages are. … It’s to see if there is some added addition to aggressive the assorted pests chemically,” continues Dr. Traoré.

Once accustomed for bartering use, Burkinabe farmers are accepted to account from beneath labor, beneath pesticide spraying and added income. According to a contempo address from the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), the acceptance of genetically adapted crops a allotment of resource-poor farmers in added countries is consistent in aberrant allowances that are accidental to the Millennium Development Goals of abbreviation abjection by 50 percent by 2015.

In accession to assessing the agronomic characteristics and capability of GM cotton, advisers at INERA are evaluating the appulse of the technology on the ambiance and the agreement and assurance of the affection berry and oil byproducts acclimated for abominable augment and animal consumption.

“I’m absorbed in giving the best accessible advice to the producer. And it’s not in the absorption of others, but in my own absorption – as a scientist,” says Dr. Traoré. “It’s in the absorption of the country, in the absorption of the producers – because I myself am the son of a ambassador – to back to them the appropriate information.”

This new video can be viewed, downloaded or anchored into addition Web website from the Conversations about Plant Biotechnology Web site. In addition, visitors to the Web website can appearance videos with farmers about the charge for GM crops in Burkina Faso, as able-bodied as with all-around experts who ambition greater acceptance to GM technology in developing countries to account affluence farming.

The Conversations about Plant Biotechnology is advised to accord a articulation and a face to the farmers and families who abound GM crops and the experts who analysis and abstraction the benefits of biotechnology in agriculture. The Web website contains added than 70 two- to three-minute, acutely candid, aboveboard and acute video segments with the humans who apperceive the technology best. The Web website is hosted by Monsanto Company — a arch all-around provider of technology-based solutions and agronomical articles that advance acreage abundance and aliment quality.

Contact:
Ranjana Smetacek
314-694-2642