Prof.Deepak Pental advocated the GM products

Chandigarh, January 25, 2015: Former Vice Chancellor of University of Delhi, and noted scientist Prof.Deepak Pental on Saturday advocated the GM products.

Participating in the first session of MICROCON-2015, Prof Pental said that there was a need for good scientific programmes to produce value added crops and thus a need for transgenics. The first session threw light on the benefits and the technological advancements of GM Crops with respect to rural prosperity and economic growth of the country.

In order to drive an agriculture dependent economy, Prof Pental stressed for studying the policies of nations, who are major stakeholders in agriculture. He spoke on rural prosperity through good administration and scientific technology. As many as 170 million hectares were under transgenic crops last year and new techniques of genome editing like crispr/cas and zinc finger is now transforming the age old technology of geneticmodification.

India imports grain crops and edible oils worth thousands of millions of dollars, in order to ensure food security for the country it is important to adopt genetic modification technologies, he added.

Speaking in support of GM technology, Principal Scientist, NBRI, Lucknow, Dr. P.K. Singh pointed out that ‘the government sanctions more than 100 crore rupees of public money for development of GM technologies and yet these are not passed by other government regulatory authorities, hence defeating the purpose of such high investments into this research.’

Former Director CDRI, Lucknow Prof. V.P. Kamboj mentioned that ‘We need to be ready to take risks in order to progress technologically.’ Executive Director, ABLE, New Delhi, Dr. N. Seetharama suggested for ‘development of proper regulatory structures committed solely to this purpose and the need for public and private sectors to work in cognizance.’ / (SK Vyas/Jalandhar)