Scientists have dispelled concerns by some fruit consumers in Tanzania that the bigger mangoes and pineapples flooding the local market could be genetically engineered varieties.
The researchers confirmed that no approved genetically engineered mangoes and pineapples are in the local market or elsewhere in the African continent.
Recently, consumers say they have noticed flooding of the local fruit market with a sweeter, bigger variety of mangoes, which was not available in the recent past. The market has also been flooded with larger size pineapples, they said.
Speaking to this paper in an exclusive interview in his office recently Dr Nicholas Nyange who is the Chief Research Officer at the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) said although there is research going on in the country and elsewhere in Africa, there are no approved genetically engineered fruits in the market in Tanzania or the rest of Africa.
“There are no GMO fruits in Tanzania and therefore consumers should not be worried by the bigger mangoes being sold in the local market,” he said, adding that their size is due to improved and conventional breeding.
He said all the mangoes and other fruits in the country are produced through conventional breeding and they can be multiplied through cutting, tissue culture and grafting.
For his part, Andrew Kachinile who is a research officer in the department of seed multiplication and breeding with the Mikocheni Agricultural Research Institute (MARI) told this paper that the weight and size of mangoes seen in the local market is a result of hybridization and tissue culture.
“The size and weight depend on the varieties of the plant. This can be a cross-breed between an improved variety and a local one,” said Kachinile.
“Consumers should not be worried by the bigger mangoes. They have become so because of good farming practices by mango farmers and the involvement of the private sector in producing good varieties from their private labs,” he explained.
Dr Hassan Mndiga, who is the Training and Outreach Coordinator for the Arusha-based Regional Centre for Africa (RCA), told this paper that the bigger mangoes are not genetically engineered.
Mndiga said the mangoes might have become bigger due to their genetic makeup brought about by good environment and nutrition. If they are cultivated and protected from many of the vagaries of nature, watered and fed with fertiliser they can become bigger in size.
Noel Kingsbury, of the University of Chicago in his book entitled “The history and Science of plant breeding; defines the term ‘grafting’ as the joining together of two different cultivars of species, or very closely related species. The most familiar are apples where one cultivar provides the rootstock and the other the bud stock or scion.
The bud stock is the variety we are familiar with. The rootstock controls the vigour and longevity of the tree. The bud stock is always a clone of the plant from which it was cut.
The Principal Agricultural Officer Merius Nzalawahe in the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives told this paper: “The mangoes you see in the local market are real ones, they are kinds of varieties.”
Nzalawahe said that some mangoes have become so after the grafting process. He said most of the modern varieties are produced in either America or in India.
According to Nzalawahe, there are two major factors that contribute to the bigger size and weight of the mangoes. He mentioned the two factors as genetic and environmental.
“I earnestly would like to assure mango consumers and the general public that the varieties namely boribo, muyini and maya are just varieties of mangoes produced through grafting and not through GMO as they suspect,” he explained.
Nzalawahe advises growers to grow the improved variety because there is a ready market, locally and internationally for them.
“Although India is a leading mango producer globally, it is also the biggest mango consumer,” he said.
The Head of Communications in the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives Dr Richard Kasuga said although GMO crops are not produced in the country, there is no law that prohibits the consumption of GMO foods.
When reached for comment on the mangoes, the Chairperson of the Association of Mango Growers (AMAGRO) in Tanzania Burton Nsape said the variety is known as ‘keitt mangoes’, mostly produced in Florida in the United States.
They are also produced in South America, Brazil Ecuador, Ghana, Senegal, Cameroon, Kenya and South Africa.
Nsape said the mangoes have ready local and international markets mainly in the Middle East.
Source: IPP Media