The government has urged its scientists to take a global lead in GMO, although it has been reluctant to commercialize GMO crops given public concerns over health risks.
Safety approvals for pest-resistant Bt rice as well as phytase corn, designed as a more environmentally friendly feed for pigs, were completed as early as 2009. But the world's largest buyer of imported GMO soy and cotton has not approved commercial production of GMO grains.
It has also delayed approval of new strains of imported GMO corn such as the MIR162 variant developed by Syngenta.
China's spending on GMO research has fallen to around 400 million yuan ($65.38 million) in 2013, down from as much as 2 billion yuan in 2010, Ke Bingsheng, president of the China Agricultural University, said in an address to Premier Li Keqiang during last week's annual session of parliament.
Ke said agriculture technology, particularly GMO, was crucial for a rapidly urbanising China to increase food production from its shrinking farmlands and water resources.
"GMO technology is extremely important to increase yields and efficiency," Ke said, according to a transcript of his speech made available by his university.
Beijing agreed an initial budget of 26 billion yuan to fund GMO development under a 12-year programme launched in 2008.
Ke did not say why the funding had fallen."
Our Citizen Ambassador group presented to China Agricultural University in 1985 before GMO was introduced. I wish I had a picture handy to show you!
Ed Winkle
They sure have a real food problem the size of which I can't imagine, but it's very likely to offset any revenue they have from the industrial sector if they can't figure how to become more self-sufficient. GMOs probably have a role to play, but in their case, no amount of gene manipulation will remove the heavy metals and pollution from the Chinese soil, so in my opinion, the answer to Chinese growing food and feed needs is to grow more food and raise more animals in modern controlled environments, and for feed and row crops, start cleaning up the soil and finding fertilizer resources without which it would do no good having the most efficient GMO if you can't feed it nutrients. This is actually where GMOs could be most useful, retrieving the nitrogen from the air like legumes do, or metabolizing more of the nutrients present in the soil. A lot of them are in a form that's not assimilable by the plant, but other organisms are able to use these forms.
ReplyDeleteThey manufacture glyphosate but do they use it? I have no idea.
ReplyDeleteEd
Sure funding dropped. They have been stealing the technology for a long time. Are you really this naive?
ReplyDeleteAhaa, its nice dialogue about this paragraph here at this blog, I have read all that, so now me also commenting at this
ReplyDeleteplace.
Feel free to visit my web page - have a peek here (http://spiritualsparks.weebly.com/)