IN a recent article, Deo Tumusiime implied that all improved varieties of
crops and plants are produced through genetic modification techniques. This
is not correct. The crops he refers to such as the oranges that grow big in
size are produced through a method called cross-breeding (or conventional
plant breeding), whereby you use pollen grains and natural fertilisation to
make a hybrid (a new variety).
This involves taking the pollen with all the genes in it to create a new
variety of plant which may be undesirable, hence the loss of the fruit?s
natural taste.

Genetic modification technology is different from cross-breeding. Under the
technology, a gene is picked from any source of plant and transferred to the
?traditional? plant such as an orange, say for early maturity. This way, you
get an orange with all the desirable attributes in a ?traditional? orange
except that it would be early-maturing. To increase a fruit size, a similar
principle applies ? you search for a plant gene[s] responsible for
increasing size and you introduce it into a crop with small fruit size. The
fruits increase but the rest of the attributes, including taste, remain
unchanged.

Therefore, genetic modification is better for improving crops than
traditional technology and should not be resisted. Virtually all crops were
not created in the current form.

Crops were got by our forefathers from the wild through a process of plant
breeding and selection by trial and error (both conscious and unconscious)
and continuous improvement to meet man?s challenges of survival. Many of our
ancestors died in the process of try-and-error as they ate poisonous plants.

Those who survived after eating non-toxic or non-poisonous plants selected
the good or harmless plants for food. These plants were then domesticated
from the wild and underwent various genetic changes cause by weather
changes, environmental surroundings, pollination/fertilisation by other
agents and breeding by scientists.

Crops will continue to undergo changes both by man and by the effects of
changes in the natural environment. Genetic engineering is not the last
effort in crop improvement but is a tool, among others, that scientists are
using in research programmes to improve crops for better yields,
pest/disease resistance, boosting nutritional value and prolonged
shelf-life, amongst others.

Most of the crops in Africa today, save for a few such as sorghum, coffee
and watermelons, did not originate in Africa. For instance, the orange and
other related citrus fruits have their origins in north-east India; bananas
originated from south-east Asia; whereas maize, pepper, beans and cotton,
among others, were brought from Mexico in Latin America. The crops grew wild
in those places and have many of their wild relatives (also centre of
diversity) from which they evolved by systematic breeding and improvement.

Therefore, scientific work on crops is not un-Godly and has not just
started. Crops continue to face a number of challenges such as diseases and
changes in the environment such as poor soil conditions and drought. If
scientists are not given a supportive environment to continue devising
strategies to improve them, we shall surely be on the path of total crop
loss.

Because of increasing population growth, land reclamation for farming and
climate change, African governments must invest more in conserving the wild
relatives of crops, traditional varieties, as well other plants in gene
banks and botanical gardens.

At a recent meeting in Kampala, the stakeholders called upon the Government
to initiate the process of setting up regional gene banks and botanical
gardens where plants of different varieties and traditional crops can be
conserved. They also called upon the Government to improve funding to the
National Plant Genetic Resources Centre in Entebbe under the National
Agricultural Research Organisation.

Such conservation centres would act as reservoirs or gene-pools from which
scientists can continue to get genes for improvement of crops to continue
feeding the ever-increasing population.

The writer is a biological scientist and the Director of Science Foundation
for Livelihoods and Development (SCIFODE)

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