FUNAAB canvasses biotechnology as panacea for food insecurity in Nigeria

Nigeria will be better positioned to address the issue of food and security challenges bedeviling it, if biotechnology is adequately funded and adopted, Olufunmilayo Adebambo, professor and director of University’s Biotechnology Centre, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB) has said.

According to her, biotechnology is the technology that is applicable to life; whether dead or alive because the samples of any individual or organism can be used to develop, improve, rate and evaluate their performance.

She said through biotechnology, the centre had been able to micro-propagate and multiply plant-lets. “From the single cutting of cassava, you can generate thousands using the micro-propagation method, same with yam, plantain, pineapple and we have been doing that for plantain and pineapple.”

Speaking on the activities of the centre and its achievements so far, the director disclosed that at the Tissue Culture Laboratory, plant-lets are micro-propagated and multiplied. “Tissue Culture Laboratory alone could truly supply plants to millions of farmers, if we really invest into plant tissue culture and micro-propagation,” She said.

“Because from a sucker of plantain, we can generate thousands of suckers, which is put in the greenhouse and then we can multiply it, to be distributed to farmers and they can easily get it at cheaper rates rather than plucking suckers from all over but with micro-propagation, we have already screened them for quality and if we have the full complement of this, the University will really be in money”, while requesting for fund to construct a greenhouse for the biotechnology centre.

Adebambo disclosed that the centre had assisted many people over time to analyse samples of sachet water, adding that “every year, we run about five workshops because we want people to come in, to know and understand what biotechnology is all about.

“Students, scientists have been coming from all over Nigeria to this place, from the Lagos State University (LASU), University of Lagos (UNILAG), from University of Nigeria (UNN) and the River State University of Science and Technology (RSUST). They sometimes sleep here to run their samples,” she adds.

“Last year, we were able to generate about N4million for this centre, although we budgeted for about N2million. At the end of last year, we decided to budget N2.5million for the Chemistry Laboratory downstairs and N2.5million for the Biotechnology Laboratory upstairs and I think by August or September, we had made over N5million.”

Highlighting some of the achievements made so far by the centre, Adebambo revealed that the University has six lines of improved local chickens, adding that she started the project in 1994 and by 2004, when she went for an exhibition in Abuja with 46 other Universities.

FUNAAB got the award for the best indigenous poultry breed and retained the award in 2005, where it competed with 53 other Universities. She said whenever the University officials travelled; they always went with one-day, one-week, two-week and four-week chicks and would end up selling all the chicks as they were in high demands.

Giving an update on the indigenous poultry breed, she said through the Bills and Melinda Gates Foundation, she had a vision to empower rural household with indigenous chickens and bring people out of poverty, noting that the University had consistently and persistently been developing the local chicken.

From the local chicken that produced just 40-60 eggs in the backyard yearly, they had been developed to produce 200-250 eggs per annum and instead of the 39 grams egg, they now produce between 55-60 grams egg.

The Director further disclosed that instead of the white eggs, the local breeds now produce pink and brown eggs, saying that although some of them still lay white eggs and instead of the mature weight of point nine kilogram, the birds at maturity weigh as much as 1.2-1.5 kilograms, so that at the end of the day, point of lay birds cannot be differentiated from the exotic birds.

“With the funding from the Bills and Melinda Gates Foundation, we now have the white, black, brown and the ash-line of the indigenous breed. There are also two mid-lines, which has 25 or 75 percent local blood. They are meat-lines; they are bigger with tougher meat than the imported stock.

“We can hardly meet the request of our customers here and other Universities have been taking our stocks. The University of Ilorin bought about 300 day-old-chicks last year and Landmark University recently bought about 300 chicks from us because our day-old-chicks are Parent Stock (PS). If you are to buy PS outside, it goes for N750 for a day-old but we sell our own here for N300 because these are Nigerian chickens for the Nigerian people.”