Biotechnology for Improving Food Security in Rwanda

Abstract

About 200 Million people in the world suffer from hunger. The United Nations (2007) estimates that the world population will reach 8.1 Billion people by 2030. Meeting global food requirements will necessitate increasing food production by 50%. The most attractive strategy to meet this challenge is to increase smallholder agricultural productivity. This strategy will not only increase food supply, it will also increase smallholder incomes, reduce malnutrition and improve livelihoods of the poor. Biotechnology has the potential to increase the world’s food output and reduce food insecurity. Plant biotechnology offers a wide scope of possibilities for increasing productivity, diversification and development of a more sustainable agriculture. This technology includes biopesticide production, plant tissue culture techniques, and the use of advanced molecular biology techniques for plant transformation, genomic analysis coupled with breeding and plant disease diagnoses. Agricultural biotechnology will contribute to food security through technologies that improve yield and quality and can easily be adopted by small scale farmers. The technology should, therefore, be simple, low cost and have little risk to humans and the environment. Tissue culture offers such kind of technology. This communication discusses the status of tissue culture research In Rwanda and how modern biotechnology has led to increased productivity and food security in some developing countries.