Biotechnology and Nigerian Agriculture: A Critical Analysis of the Benefits and Challenges

Abstract

Nigeria, an oil rich country also endowed with vast arable land spend over $10 billion annually on food imports. Agriculture accounts for 75% of the country labour force and 80% of the total government revenue in the last decades. Today, the sector contributes only 22.35% to the GDP due to factors like Climate Change, plants and animals diseases, cost of production, rural-urban migration, government neglect and poor output. Though biotechnology was practiced since Neolithic times, today the advancement in science allow the craftsmanship of plants and animals at molecular level. Recombinant technology today allows incorporation and expression of gene products in distant organisms from different kingdom. Combining genes from different organisms is known as Recombinant DNA Technology, and the resulting organism is said to be genetically modified, genetically engineered or transgenic. This is seen as an important scientific breakthrough of this century, as it gives room for genetic manipulation leading to a “modified”, but novel organisms, foods, products, drugs and vaccines that can address the frightening global food insecurity, extreme poverty, climate change and number of monstrous public health challenges and improve human income in developing world. This study review the benefits of recombinant DNA technology in transforming agriculture in Nigeria. These include biopesticides using a gene product (toxin) from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) in tobacco and tomato; biofertilizer using engineered Mycorrhizal fungi and Nitrogen fixing bacteria; herbicides tolerance (to atrazine, glyphosate and bromoxynil); disease resistance (to tobacco mosaic virus and crown gall disease); Salt, draught, frost and temperature tolerance; seeds with enhanced antifeedant content and biofortification; transgenic animals, livestock and poultry (bovine somatropin in enhanced milk production, enhanced growth and lean, fatless beef production); animal health (vaccine against swine pseudorabies, swine rotavirus, foot mouth disease, rabies and infectious bronchitis). Conclusively, recombinant DNA technology holds a promising prospects in leap frogging Nigeria’s agriculture, job creation and food security.