Agricultural biotechnology in the Philippines: Prospects and challenges

As early as 1979, the Philippine Government envisioned that biotechnology would play a pivotal role in solving the long-standing problems on agricultural sustainability, incurable diseases, and climate change. With the burgeoning human population on an exponential rise, there is a dire need for a new paradigm to encourage agricultural sustainability. Biotechnology can be adopted and has been identified as one of the solutions to address these growing concerns. As an important tool, it has wide applications in agri-industry as it offers opportunities and promising economic potential for enhancing productivity and developing competitive products. There are groups in the country which abhor biotechnology, particularly the use of GMOs. They are very visible and articulate in various forums intended to discuss issues on biotechnology outputs. Support to research and development on biotechnology would suffer if their effort succeeded in urging the government to make a misinformed decision on policies concerning biotechnology.