MANILA, Philippines–The Philippines remains among the top countries where genetically modified (GM) crops are being cultivated as biotech produce continue to be the “fastest-adopted crop technology” in the world, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA).
The ISAAA said the size of land planted to biotech crops globally continued to grow throughout the 19 years since the first commercial planting in 1996 in the United States.
According to the group, the Philippines kept the 12th rank among the 28 countries that have so far adopted GM crops.
As of the end of 2014, there were 73.1 million hectares planted to GM crops in the US. In the Philippines, 800,000 hectares are planted to biotech corn.
This makes the Philippines part of the list of 19 “mega-countries” or those with more than 50,000 hectares devoted to biotech crops.
Adoption traversed different levels of economic development as Bangladesh last year became the 28th country to encourage commercial cultivation.
Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, makes the 20th developing country to go into GMOs. Authorities in the South Asian country approved in 2013 the commercialization of the world’s first biotech eggplant.
Earlier, ISAAA noted that this development in Bangladesh broke the impasse of the approval process to commercialize biotech eggplant in India as well as the Philippines, where a case is pending in the Supreme Court.
In Bangladesh, biotech proponents are also pursuing approval of GM potato and the so-called Golden Rice, which is expected to help address death and blindness among malnourished children.
Scientists continue to hope that regulators in the Philippines will approve commercialization of the Vitamin A-enriched grain by 2016, but the ISAAA said Bangladesh has also assigned high priority to the product.
In Southeast Asia, the only other country that allows biotech crops is Myanmar, with 300,000 hectares planted to GM cotton.