Mymensingh, Bangladesh — Bangladesh, whose populous and low-level delta region is expected to be severely affected by rising sea levels, is using nuclear technology to adapt to this threat. Scientists are looking for ways to protect the country’s agriculture against flood and salinity, as well as drought and changing temperatures. With support from the IAEA and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), they are developing climate change resilient crop varieties that will help feed the country’s growing population.
“We are in a constant fight. We fight salinity in our soil, extreme temperatures, drought and floods,” said Mirza Mofazzal Islam, chief scientific officer and head of the Plant Breeding Division at the Bangladesh Institute of Nuclear Agriculture (BINA). “But, for all these problems, we have a solution — at least as far as crops are concerned.”
Scientists at BINA have been developing radiation-induced plant varieties that can resist diverse climatic conditions. In the last decades, these plant varieties have helped farmers increase rice production three-fold, ensuring food security and giving this predominantly agricultural country an important economic push.
The more than 60 plant varieties the scientists can offer to farmers today have been developed through a process called plant mutation breeding (see Plant mutation breeding). These varieties of rice, lentils, chickpeas, peanuts, mustard, sesame, soybean, jute, tomato and wheat have now become popular across Bangladesh, accounting for about 8% of its crops, helping farmers produce a steady supply of these crops and improving livelihoods.
“Irradiation can be used to induce mutations in plants to produce varieties that display improved product quality, have higher yields and yield stability, greater resilience to climate change and tolerance to environmental stresses,” said Ljupcho Jankuloski, plant breeder and geneticist at the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture. “The rice mutant varieties developed at BINA have helped Bangladesh increase its rice production in the last few decades.”
Seeing that crops can thrive here gives us hope, especially because we are expecting rising sea levels and higher salinity in soil to be one of the biggest threats to our agriculture.
