Agricultural Biotechnology: Global and Local Experience

Overview

Bangladesh is a rapidly developing country, experiencing rapid population growth, increased urbanization, and economic development. To keep up with the needs of an expanding society, and to benefit rural populations and smallholder farmers, Bangladesh’s agricultural research organizations are making enormous progress in producing improved crop varieties. This includes the use of biotechnology, which opens up new frontiers for achieving sustainable nutrition. The safety of these new products is managed through a well-developed biosafety process, informed by international agreements and experience with agricultural biotechnology over the last twenty years.

In this context, the South Asia Biosafety Program, in collaboration with USAID, USDA, and the State Department, organized a webinar on December 9, 2020 titled “Agricultural Biotechnology: Global and Local Experience.” The program featured a keynote address from Dr. Stuart Smyth of the University of Saskatchewan on the global experience with agricultural biotechnology. This was preceded by an overview of USAID’s approach to agricultural biotechnology and followed by two presentations from agricltural biotechnology projects that are ongoing in Bangladesh. The program concluded with an overview of Bangladesh’s biosafety regulatory system and a question-and-answer period. The objective of the program was to provide an update on the status of biotechnology development in Bangladesh and raise awareness of how this technology is being managed to achieve sustainable benefits for the country and how biosafety processes function to ensure safety for humans and the environment.