Atoms4Food Assessment Mission to Pakistan Releases Recommendations for Food Security

During the week-long mission, a team of FAO and IAEA experts visited the national authorities responsible for agriculture, health and atomic energy in Pakistan to study the existing policies, infrastructure, capacities and readiness of national institutions to leverage nuclear technology. Field visits were also organized to the Pakistan Agriculture Research Council, National Agriculture Research Centre, National Institutes of Health, Nuclear Institute for Agriculture & Biology and to the National Institute for Biotechnology and Genetics Engineering.

The mission team met with over 50 stakeholders to discuss their needs, share recommendations and develop action plans in five thematic areas: crop production, soil and water management, animal production and health, food safety control, and nutrition.

Building on Pakistan’s cooperation with the FAO and IAEA to produce new and improved plant varieties, the assessment mission highlighted opportunities to integrate advanced technologies such as genetic engineering, speed breeding and biotechnology into mutation breeding programmes for priority crops in Pakistan.

“[Pakistan has] used mutation breeding to create pest-resistant and drought-tolerant crops like chickpea, rice and cotton, we have employed nuclear techniques to improve soil fertility, we’ve reclaimed barren land, optimized fertilizer use for better yields and reduced costs, to give a few examples,” said ?Muhammad Yussouf Saleem, Director General and Chief Scientist of the Agri- & Biotech Division of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and the national focal point in Pakistan for Atoms4Food. “The initiative will further expand our cooperation by engaging new partners and breaking silos across sectors with a whole value-chain approach.”?

Revitalizing Pakistan’s seed system will also help capitalize on the improved plant varieties developed with FAO and IAEA support. The mission team recommended that national institutions and stakeholders across the value chain be trained to scale up the distribution and use of improved seeds, making sure they reach farmers and translate into growing yields.

Soil degradation and inefficient use of water and nutrients further limit crop production — however, decades of cooperation with IAEA has supported Pakistan’s the Nuclear Institute for Agriculture & Biology in transforming salt-affected soils into productive farmland.

The Atoms4Food assessment mission found further potential to optimize and broaden the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices in the country. This includes capacity building in efficient nutrient and water use practices, to enhance soil fertility and health, as well as reducing the carbon footprint of fertilization.

In the area of animal health, stakeholders and decision-makers agreed that urgent interventions are needed to develop local capacity to control animal diseases, including foot-and-mouth disease, peste des petits ruminants, hemorrhagic septicemia and poultry pathogens.

Each year, these animal diseases cause significant economic losses in terms of reduced milk and meat production in Pakistan. Hundreds of millions of vaccines must be imported each year at great cost to the country and, because they were developed in a different context, the doses are often ineffective.

Through the IAEA’s Animal Production and Health Laboratory, the FAO and IAEA develop protocols, guidelines and standard operating procedures for the application of nuclear-derived immunological and molecular technologies for the early and rapid diagnoses, prevention, control and eradication of these diseases.

Future cooperation with Pakistan through the Atoms4Food initiative will focus on upgrading local capacities in the use of nuclear technologies for the detection, characterization, and monitoring of animal diseases, zoonotic diseases and antibiotic resistance, and producing safe and effective vaccines against animal pathogens using irradiation.

Without an effective system to test and control food safety, the export of agricultural produce from Pakistan remains difficult. A dearth of accredited testing capacities for mycotoxins, veterinary drugs and microbes are a bottleneck in Pakistan’s efforts to improve the safety of food products for foreign markets. The assessment mission recommended scaling up monitoring capabilities and establishing a national plan to ensure safety across the food value chain.

A review of the Pakistan’s analytical capacity for the application of stable isotope techniques in nutritional assessments revealed further opportunities to integrate nuclear technologies in informing evidence-based nutrition policy making.

By identifying the most bioavailable iron fortificants in wheat, for example, scientists have facilitated the development of effective, nutrition-specific health programs and interventions to address iron deficiency anaemia, which affects about 50 per cent of children in Pakistan.

The findings of this assessment mission will provide the basis for the development and implementation of a national Atoms4Food action plan, which will deliver support in the areas of research, transfer of technology and capacity building to empower national and local stakeholders for a more robust and resilient agrifood system.