– By IFEANYI EKWEREKWU

Bio-resources are living organisms or products from living organisms that can be used to produce foods, products, services and energy carriers. These living organisms or products from living organisms could be individual plants, animals or their genes. These can be used for drugs, food, livestock feed, construction materials for shelter, environmental protection or in the development of improved crops and animals for higher yield and tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses.

In terms of value creation, bio-resources development highlights the processing and conversion of bio-resources into new products as well as research and innovation activities as an important driver. Also, in terms of spatial focus, the bio-resource vision emphasizes the significant potential for stimulating development in rural settings. For example, plants producing new bio-products will positively influence employment in rural locations and will most likely be less footloose than other forms of economic activities due to the importance of natural resources as key location factors.

Thus, the bio-resource bio-economy opens up for a revived rural development-driven diversification into higher value-added products. Still, while localized competencies related to cultivating and processing of the biological material are central to this development, this will in most cases need to be complemented with externally located knowledge.

Bio-resources deal with living organisms or their parts or products while biotechnology deals with using the living organisms or their parts to make products and services. There are ways to improve bio-resources, of which biotechnology is one.

Biotechnology, on the other hand, is any technique that uses living organisms or parts thereof to make or modify a product, improve plants or animals or develop micro-organisms for specific uses. Bio-resources deal with living organisms or their parts or products while biotechnology deals with using the living organisms or their parts to make products and services. There are ways to improve bio-resources, of which biotechnology is one. While biotechnology takes a more narrow departure in biotechnology research, bio-resources emphasizes the importance of research in multiple fields, which are in different ways related to biological materials.

Consequently, research and innovation efforts often involve collaboration between actors with dissimilar competences, and the importance of research on issues such as consumer preferences. Invariably, biotechnology starts from a bio-resource – a living organism or its parts or products. While biotechnology is only interested in converting bio-resources (living organism or their parts) from one form to another (products and services), bio-resources development and conservation is interested in developing fit living organisms, quality secondary or tertiary or quaternary bio-resources and making them available and sustainable for mankind.

For example, using biotechnological technique, one can convert a primary bio-resource to a secondary, tertiary or quaternary bio-resource (which is termed products and services).

In bio-economy, vision of lifting a nation’s citizenry out of poverty level, biotechnology vision relates to economic growth and job creation with risks and ethical concerns taken into account, neglecting availability and sustainability of biomass which causes feedback effect. On the other hand, bio-resources vision of bio-economy relates to economic growth, job creation and availability and sustainability of biomass taken into account.

Therefore, biotechnology, being an integral part of bio-resources, focuses on economic growth and job creation, using biomass through research and development to create goods and services. Bio-resources focus on sustenance of biomass for economic growth and job creation. Biotechnology research starts at the molecular level of bio-resources which the outcome is applied to product development and commercialization. Biotechnology techniques are used in conservation of genetic resources and sustenance of bio-resources.

In conservation of genetic resources, plant genetic resources and animal genetic resources are conserved. Conservation of plant genetic resources can best be achieved through an appropriate combination of in situ (in natural or original areas) and ex situ (in artificial habitat or habitat different from the original one) methods. The choice of conservation methods and techniques will depend on the objectives of the particular conservation effort, the breeding system and seed behaviour of the species in question, as well as on the available resources including funds, infrastructure and technologies.

Plants that produce recalcitrant seeds (intolerant of desiccation and low temperatures) could be preserved as ex situ live-gene banks (or gene libraries) or by in vitro conservation methods of enforced reduced growth storage. Other biotechnology techniques used in bio-resources development and conservation include plant tissue culture used for micro-propagation, in vitro conservation and cryopreservation.

For animal genetic resources:

• Cryopreservation;
• Invitro production of embryos which includes: splitting and cloning of embryos, marker-assisted selection, sexing of embryos and transfer of new genes into an embryo;
• Embryo culture and transfer;
• Artificial insemination; and
• Intracytoplasmic sperm injection.

In sustainable bio-resources, biotechnological techniques used are:

• Plant cell tissue culture;
• Protoplast isolation, fusion and culture;
• Biological nitrogen fixation;
• Use of molecular markers; and
• Gene transfers/genetic transformation.

Ekwerekwu is Coordinator, Bioresources Development Centre (BIODEC), Okwudor, Imo State