Four crops used for animal husbandry including maize, soybean, cassava and potato are the ones that Vietnam needs to apply transgenic technology to increase yield as soon as possible. It shouldn’t apply this technology to other crops such as pepper, rice, coffee to avoid influence on psychology of exporters in the world.

The above information was provided by Dr. Nguyen Quoc Binh, Vice Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Biotechnology Centre at the workshop “Biotechnology for crops in Vietnam: Development trend for future” held on 29 September 2008 by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development combined with the US Embassy.

The main speaker of the workshop was Dr. Paul S. Teng (Nanyang University, Singapore) – one of the experienced experts in biotechnology in the world. In addition, the workshop also attracted the participation of researchers/scientists on biotechnology from institutions, universities in Ho Chi Minh City and provinces in the South, Central and Highland regions of Vietnam.

Dr. Paul S.Teng presented the roles of biotechnology as well necessary activities to develop application of biotechnology in agriculture.

According to Dr. S. Teng, applications of biotechnology in agriculture included traditional breeding improvement by molecular markers; early identification methods, diagnosis and improvement of knowledge in genetics and ecology of biodiversity management. Biotechnology would enable to increase potential yield and marketable yield as well as to minimize losses caused by pests, diseases and weeds; reduce labor cost for weeding and pesticide spray.

Speaking about benefit of transgenic crops, Dr. Paul S.Teng indicated specific advantages of application of transgenic/genetic modified (GM) crops like increase of yield and income, biodiversity protection; good impact on environment; social benefit; more food supply for animal husbandry.

At the workshop, experts in biotechnology also had reports on transgenic studies such as: “Study on transgenics in soybean and breeding pest – resistant GM soybean lines” by Dr. Tran Thi Cuc Hoa (Cuu Long Delta Rice Research Institute (CLRRI); “Study on ability to increase lifetime of chrysanthemum through IPT transformation to make CyTokinni” by Nguyen Huu Ho et al. (Tropical Biological Institute)…

After presentations of Vietnamese scientists, Dr. Paul S. Teng said that he was impressed by implementing capacity of institutions, universities in Vietnam. However, release of the above applications to the fields, dining tables as well consumers took time. This is because Vietnamese scientists lacked legal basics to carry out application of their research results to reality.
In order to carry out what Vietnamese colleagues reported at the workshop, Dr. Paul Teng supposed that it was essential to implement sample fields, then multiplication trials in different locations in the whole country and finally assurance and proving bio-safety of transgenic crops by scientific evidence.

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