Question

Identify two (2) major problems each facing the below industry/field in Ghana and how biotechnology can be used to solve such problems.

a. Agriculture

b. Environment

c. Local food/beverage production

d.Medicine

Answer 1

a) Agriculture

A serious threat to agriculture as a business is the indiscriminate approach to estate development, whereby peri-urban and rural farmlands are being sold all over the country for the development of residential facilities without regard for the welfare of the farming households who are being displaced.

Other challenges faced by the agricultural sector in Ghana are poor infrastructure, including lack of attention to irrigation development, high transport costs, poor roads to farms, land acquisition, tenure issues.

Use of biotechnology:

The molecular biology laboratory in ghana has the human capacity to apply the following techniques: genotyping/fingerprinting of germplasm, genetic diversity studies marker-assisted selection as applied in breeding programmes, disease diagnostic studies, gene mapping, gene mining for trait capture, primer design and gene silencing in crop improvement.
The use of these techniques will help reduce breeding time, increase essential nutrients, improve yields, enhance stress tolerance, improve resistance to disease and pests, and lead to development of new products
and growing techniques.

b) environment

Some of the major challenges or environmental problems in Ghana are waste management, illegal mining, logging, deforestation, noise, water and air pollution.

Use of biotechnology:

The adoption of biotech crops between 1996 and 2016 reduced pesticide spraying by 671.2 million kg and reduced environmental pollution associated with pesticide use by 18.4 percent,

For deforestation,biotechnology has also been an important tool for conserving plant and other species in the form of tissue culture and in gene banks

c) Local food/ beverage production:

1) Rise of natural and organic products

2) Adapting to shift toward e-commerce

3) consumers trend towards fit and healthy diet foods

Use of biotechnology:

Selective breeding of essential foods such as rice, corn and wheat have created thousands of local varieties with improved yield compared to their wild ancestors.

Food producers can use new biotechnology to produce new products with desirable characteristics. These include characteristics such as disease and drought-resistant plants, leaner meat and enhanced flavor and nutritional quality of foods which will attract healthy diet friendly consumers.

d) Medicine:

1) The communicable diseases prevalent in Ghana are malaria, HIV/AIDs, diarrhoea and tuberculosis while increasing incidence of non-communicable diseases include cancers, cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, chronic respiratory disease and others.

2)Ghanians are estimated to die from lifestyle and chronic diseases. Womens health problems in Ghana are related to nutrition, reproductive health and family planning that are critical for national development. Ghana has fallen short in preventing maternal, infant or child mortality that has been found worsening over the past few years.

Use of biotechnology:

The application of biotechnology in Ghana has been for medical research and diagnostics Biotechnology application started a little over two decades ago using mainly tissue culture tools for teaching and research purposes. Other technologies that came along were ELISA for disease diagnostics and isozymes for characterization.