National biotechnology research development and extension program of the Philippines: an overview and updates

Biotechnology is defined in this paper as any technique that uses living organisms or substances from those organisms to make or modify a product, improve plants or animals, or develop microorganisms for specific uses. Many biotechnology products are now commercially available in the world market such as herbicide tolerant crops (soybean), plants that can produce its own pesticides (cotton, corn, soybean) virus resistant crops (papaya, squash), cold tolerant crops (strawberry), more nutritious crops (corn with higher protein content), and better oil plants (canola). Western countries such as the US and Canada had been reaping the benefits from modern biotechnology. The Philippines is still in its infant stages of developing its biotechnology programs. The last 2 decades had been focused mainly on traditional biotechnology such as fermentation, tissue culture, and diagnostics. Modern biotechnology, which makes use of recombinant techniques and marker-aided breeding techniques, had been practiced only during the last 4 years. Some of the constraints, which account for the slow progress of modern biotechnology are: low levels of funding, lack of focus of research, inadequate human resources and poor support in terms of equipment and infrastructure. Concerns for biosafety, environmental safety, and biodiversity conservation have also contributed to the slow progress of biotechnology. AFMA had tried to remedy most of concerns in terms of providing funding for R & D in biotechnology. It also provides funding to train researchers in the modern techniques as well as in the procurement of new equipment and facilities. The R & D Biotechnology agenda had adopted 4 themes: improving productivity and profitability; environmental protection and sustainable agriculture; identification and isolation of useful genes; and science-based policy decisions and regulations. To promote biotechnology, the networks had adopted the agendum of increasing popular awareness of biotechnology. The goals and implementation strategies of the program will be discussed in this paper