To mark World Cotton Day, the IAEA Director General has highlighted how nuclear science helps optimize the growth of the world’s most important natural fibre, at celebrations in Benin this morning.
In his recorded message to over 400 attendees at the World Cotton Day celebration, Rafael Mariano Grossi spoke of the Agency’s role in the international ‘Partnership for Cotton’ and the importance of the crop.
“Cotton really is a crop worth celebrating: It produces useful natural fibres. It alleviates poverty in some of the world’s least developed countries. It supports the income of women. And it removes harmful carbon from the atmosphere,” the Director General said.
The IAEA has over six decades of experience developing and sharing nuclear techniques that help get the best out of soil, water and crops like cotton, as part of the work carried out by the Joint FAO/IAEA Centre for Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture.
The centre’s laboratories in Seibersdorf conduct applied research and through the Agency’s Technical Cooperation Programme, the developed technology is then transferred to countries and eventually to farmers to employ these techniques in the field.
For example, IAEA/FAO scientists use irradiation to speed up the evolution of cotton seeds and develop varieties that are more resilient to drought, heat or disease.
And in Pakistan, for example, this technique, known as mutation breeding (see Plant mutation breeding), has helped develop 32 new cotton varieties since 1970. Now, more than 40 per cent of the cotton-producing areas in Pakistan are benefiting from the use these new varieties with improved traits adapted to climate change.
