The National Biotechnology Research Center (NBRC), one of the 17 national research centers under the Ethiopian Institute of Agriculture Research (EIAR), revealed that its sophisticated biotechnological studies including identifying and analyzing DNA has been severely hobbled by frequent power interruption and inadequate supply.
State-of-the art devices that the center employs are sustaining damages and technical failures incurring huge maintenance cost due to power shortages and recurrent interruption, officials of the center told journalists this week on a rare visit to the research center.
The National Agricultural Biotechnology Laboratory (NABL) was established in 2010 under the administration of the Holetta Agricultural Research Center.
But, it was upgraded to an independent research centre following the amended controversial Bio-safety Proclamation in 2015, which granted the powers and duties to undertake biotechnological research including the highly disputable and contentious genetically engineered organisms or GMOs.
Having acquired the latest technological laboratory devices that are currently available in the market, the facility is undertaking research on the characterization of biological diversity at a molecular level with clones.
According to information obtained from the center, the major research themes include Plant Tissue Culture Biotechnology, Central Molecular Biotechnology, Animal Biotechnology and Microbial Biotechnology research and Laboratories.
According to Endale Gebre (PhD), Director of the Biotechnology Research Directorate with EIAR, the center is equipped with the necessary devices to host researchers from various universities that are doing their studies on biotechnology at a doctoral level and others experimenting on biotechnology application in cell and tissue culture for disease cleaning and rapid propagation of plants.
Endale also recalled that before securing these modern devices researchers across the nation used to analyze genetic varieties of plants and animals morphologically and made estimates just by sight.
Explaining the efficiency of the equipment, the director told the journalist: “these equipments we use in the plant tissue laboratory, for instance, are the most efficient and advanced devices in the market currently. The developed world uses them for screening crop varieties,” he added.
Tewodros Tadesse, case team leader with the Center, on his part, describes how the devices revolutionized research in genetic diversification in Ethiopia. “Today, with this new laboratory equipment, we can identify or analyze up to 1,500 genetic resources spontaneously,” he said. So far, protocol for mass propagation and disease cleaning have been developed for some crops like mainly potato, sweet potato, cassava, apple root stocks, plum root stocks and etc.
It was also noted that some of these machines are bought with huge cost which could go as high as USD 250,000 to half a million.
However, the machines are suffering from damages and technical failure due to frequent power interruption in Holetta. As a result, the center is forced to spend extra cost every year for maintenance. But, the worst effect of the constant power outage is loss of invaluable research works which were in progress.
“When the power is off, it causes the research activities to disappear. We are losing resources which are quite expensive,” Endale told the journalists. Hence, the center has called upon the government and the policymakers to seek solutions.
Adding insult to injury, the center has got no maintenance facility in its compound. Hence, whenever the maintenance service is needed, the center has to contract the Metal Engineering Corporation (MetEC) for the service every time damages occur. The center is even forced to bring maintenance service givers from abroad to bring the maintenance overhead to higher level.
Despite these critical challenges the center is yet building a new laboratory and a greenhouse facility to accommodate the additional devices to begin genetic engineering research for the first time in the country. But the officials of the center did not give specific date regarding the scheduled commencement.
