HYDERABAD: DEVELOPING countries should look at efficient handling of biotechnology for agriculture growth to drive economic and social development. Biotechnology should be considered — with sufficient regulatory systems — as a component of crop improvement, along with conventional breeding technologies for sustainable increases in crop production.

Scientists and regulators drove home this point at the inauguration of a three-day workshop for the news media on `Covering biotech: issues and opportunities,' here on Monday. There is more to biotechnology than genetic engineering and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which came under the glare of press coverage because of the controversies and potential hazards to human health and environment.

The workshop is being organised by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC-India).

While the issues needed to be addressed through regulatory measures, the public and the politicians need to be made aware of both the potentials and pitfalls in biotechnology to enable its application in agriculture, they said.

Dr Margarita Escaler, Manager, Global Knowledge Centre on Crop Biotechnology, International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA), said there was a continuous increase in the number of countries using biotechnology for crop improvement. Despite a strong emotional resistance to genetically-modified crops, the area under such crops had increased from 1.8 million hectares in 1996 to about 68 million hectares in 2003, she said.

Dr Dyno Keatinge, Deputy Director General-Research, ICRISAT, said judicious use of biotechnology could help fight diseases and pests.

Mr Vijay Menon, of AMIC-India, quoting a Food and Agricultural Organisation report on biotechnology released earlier this year, said "genetic engineering and other forms of agricultural biotechnology are benefiting poor farmers.