China is prudent in developing genetically modified (GM) farm
produce but it will keep working in bio-engineering for
agriculture, said an agricultural official at a forum on food
safety held in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province on Saturday.
Luo Bin, deputy director of Farm Produce Quality Safety Center
under the Ministry of Agriculture, said that China has developed
over 100 varieties of GM farm produce, but the ministry has only
allowed five categories of them to go on market, which are soybean,
corn, oil-seed rape, cotton and tomato.
"The development, production and sales of GM farm produce are
very strictly controlled in China, " said Luo at the International
Forum on the Safety of Farm Produce.
The most widely planted GM product in China is cotton. The
country has 8 million ha of farmland under over 30 varieties of
cotton crops modified with anti-pest genes, since they were first
introduced to farmers in 1998.
The growing of GM cotton helped reduce the use of pesticides by
50,000 tons, bringing about economic returns of 16.8 billion yuan
(US$2.1 billion), said Luo.
(Xinhua News Agency June 18, 2006)