By Muhammad Soban ISLAMABAD, May 16 (INP-WealthPK): Demand for food has significantly increased in Pakistan with the growing population. According to a report from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, 16% of the population is suffering from moderate or severe food insecurity. The situation demands the policymakers fully adopt technologies such as biotechnology that provide immense opportunities to develop crop genetic variants with better qualitative and quantitative yields. Pakistan has, to some extent, benefited from biotechnology to enhance crop yield, modify products and produce desired livestock breeds. Biotechnology is a process that uses living organisms, including bacteria, viruses, fungi, yeast, animal cells, plant cells, etc., to make or modify a product, improve plants or animals, or engineer microbes for a specific purpose. Agribiotechnology involves the use of scientific techniques to develop the plant, animal and microbial technologies. Scientists the world over have developed solutions for improving agricultural productivity based on their understanding of DNA. Biotechnology enhances breeders' ability to enhance crops and livestock, allowing them to identify genes that may be beneficial to specific crops and to modify those properties with unparalleled precision. By using biotechnology, improvements can also be achieved that are not possible through traditional cross-breeding. The foods produced using biotechnology are as safe as those developed using conventional methods. Molecular biology and biotechnology are used in breeding modern plants to improve crop production. Crop plants can introduce genes more efficiently and effectively through characterising the relevant gene sequences, identifying desirable allele types, creating markers to detect those alleles in a segregating population, and using the transformation technologies. It is often called the "Gene Revolution" because it is expected to increase crop production through biotechnological intervention. Agricultural biotechnology could address a number of challenges in Pakistan's agriculture sector. Talking to WealthPK, Dr Usman Ali Abbasi, an Assistant Professor at Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi, said, "Pakistan has developed many varieties that have desired characteristics, including high yield, weather-resistance, optimal use of inputs, etc." He said that the enhancement of yield per acre was still the most important goal of a crop improvement programme in Pakistan. “A substantial increase in yield has been achieved by adopting technologies like hybrids and developing crop varieties with a higher portion of nutrients. Biotechnology can intervene in crop physiology to improve crop yields.” Usman Abbasi further added that Pakistan had been facing abiotic stress, including droughts, salinity, less rainfall, unexpected rains, hailstorms, floods, and temperature fluctuations. “Through classical breeding, species' ability to respond to such stress has been exploited extensively. Globally, through biotechnology, genes from wild relatives or unrelated species have been incorporated into crop plants to produce plants that can resist unfavourable environments.” Usman Abbasi said that insufficient soil nutrition required intensive fertiliser and nutrient applications to improve yields. Similarly, other inputs, such as water, insecticides, and weedicides, were also used to achieve high yields. However, only efficient use of these inputs through genetic mechanisms could help achieve a higher yield with less input, he said, adding that input responsive genotypes could be developed more efficiently through biotechnology.