Montagu: GM Crop Cultivation Way Forward for Sustainable Agriculture

World Food Prize Laureates 2013, Prof. Marc Van Montagu, founder and chairman, Institute of Plant Biotechnology Outreach (IPBO), Belgium emphasizes on the wide spread cultivation of GM crops as a way forward for sustainable agriculture in his keynote address at Bangalore India Bio, 10-12 February at Bengaluru, India. "Only sustainable agriculture and the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops could save farmlands" stated Van Montagu. "It will not just be resourceful for farmers, but for the population too, as it could help control hunger, poverty, and malnutrition. There is a need to use science and technology to ensure better and safer agriculture," he added. Speaking on the topic ‘Social and Economic Importance of Plant Biotechnology', van Montagu said, "When the best of science is happening in the agri-biotech labs to devise solutions to GM crops, there is a need to transfer these technologies to the fields."

Van Montagu highlighted the need to introduce GM technology for orphan crops and local varieties, citing the example of farmers in Brazil who cultivated native beans without using chemicals manufactured by multinational companies. "This is where cultivation of GM crops would be the only way to save nature, avoid the use of fertilizers and improve the quality of arable land helping to triple the crop yield," Montagu said. "We need to recuperate the farmlands to sustain fertile soil. GM crops and genetic engineering are natural outcomes. This is because nature is a genetic lab, and the gene pool is permanently evolving, which is the base of evolution," he added.

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