Biotech Updates

WB Helps Strengthen Biosafety in Peru

March 26, 2010

The World Bank noted the advances made by the Regional Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) Biosafety Project during a dialogue held at the National Agrarian University La Molina, Lima, Peru. Through a donation of $5 M from the Global Environment Fund (GEF) and administered by the World Bank, the Project is supporting two parallel projects of South-South cooperation. Science-based tools and methodologies are being developed to aid debate on biosafety of GM crops in centers of diversity. This is in compliance with the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety which has been signed by 157 countries including Peru.

The LAC-Biosafety Project is led by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture-CIAT (Cali, Colombia) and is being implemented in Peru by the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina, with the collaboration of the National Institute for Agrarian Innovation (INIA) and the International Potato Center (CIP).

The national project coordinator, Enrique Fernández-Northcote, explained that in the case of Peru, the experience will focus on potato, maize and cotton. The knowledge about the frequency of gene flow from commercially-improved potato varieties in areas where it coexists with the production and trade of native potato varieties, will help to measure the impact of a potential introduction of GMOs in a center of origin and diversity. "If this impact was small, it could significantly reduce the perception that commercial and transgenic potato would have a negative effect on the biodiversity of the tuber. This knowledge will help to design an effective and sensitive procedure for monitoring the presence of transgenes in native potato and wild relatives," Fernandez-Northcote added.

The original article in Spanish is at http://www.ediciones.expreso.com.pe/2010/mar/05/index8e27.html?option=com_content&task=view&id=90278&Itemid=34 The English translation is provided by Javier Verastegui, Communications Coordinator of the LAC Biosafety Project-Peru (E-mail: verastegui.javier@gmail.com)