Jute genome to bring lustre back to golden fibre

---

FE Report
Decoding of jute genome would bring lustre back to the golden fibre, help it farm throughout the year, make it climate change-resistant and better its fibre quality, said the scientist who led the sequencing job.
Dr Maqsudul Alam said local farmers could start reaping the benefits of the decoding within the next five years and make the country at the forefront of global revival of natural fibre.
"It is the glory of the country. We cannot afford to lose it," he said, a day after the Prime Minister told the Parliament that a group of scientists led by Dr Alam has sequenced the genome of jute plant.
A jubilant Hasina broke through the news amid loud cheers by lawmakers, saying it would improve the quality of jute fibre and help its revival and earn extra bucks for the country's millions of farmers.
Dr Alam, a Bangladeshi scientist from Faridpur who earlier decoded the genome of papaya in the US and rubber plant in Malaysia, told a crowded press conference Thursday that Bangladesh should now claim intellectual property rights of jute.
"We now need to file patent application to win the rights. Our discovery cannot go in vain," he said, adding the country now has got what "we need to take control of
our agriculture".
"This however depends on a number of factors," said Dr Alam, a professor at the University of Hawaii.
Led by Dr Alam, a consortium of researchers from Dhaka University, Bangladesh Jute Research Institute (BJRI) and software firm DataSoft in collaboration with Centre for Chemical Biology, University of Science, Malaysia and University of Hawaii successfully decoded jute's genome.
This accomplishment by local scientists and bioinformatics specialists will potentially place Bangladesh at the forefront of the global jute industry and could rejuvenate the multi-million dollar jute industry, Alam said.
"The significant benefit in upcoming years will help Bangladesh to develop new quality breeds of jute both in terms of fibre quality and resistance to various diseases," he said.
For the first time, the country will be able to farm jute throughout the year and in a shorter period, which will help save the farmers huge amount of cost, he said.
Jute now grows during the rainy season. It takes up at least four months to grow and is one of the costliest crops in the country as plucking of its fibres is labour-intensive.
Dr Alam said as one of the largest jute producing countries in the world, Bangladesh had to sequence the jute otherwise the competitors will have captured the right.
"Time is very limited as others are also working on the issue although from innovation point of view, we are ahead of competitors by three to four months."
"This innovation will help us know where we need to intervene to develop the crop. This will take the agriculture forward," Alam said.
"We have to think out of box. We have also to keep the coordination intact so that we can lower the time."
He said Bangladesh would be able to reap the benefit of the latest innovation by 2015, provided the government spends in further research.
Agriculture Minister Matia Chowdhury said the innovation would help improve the quality of jute and enable the country to make genetic intervention. "It will improve the quality of the natural fibre."
"If we can make genetic intervention we will be able to bring down the time period for cultivation, which will help the jute to avoid flood water that regularly causes harm to the crops."
"We will get short duration crop. We hope to cultivate the crop round the year."
On the occasion, the agriculture minister said the government is now working on presenting a different pay structure and set a different retirement age for the scientists so that local talents like Maqsudul Alam can work in the country and Bangladesh can prevent brain-drain.
BJRI director general Dr Kamal Uddin Ahmed said the discovery would scale up the production. "Currently a hectare land can grow 2.0 tonnes of jute. But the new innovation can contribute to producing 2.5 to 3.0 tonnes."
Prof Dr Haseena Khan of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Dhaka, and Mahboob Zaman, managing director of DataSoft, also spoke on the occasion.
In December 2009, the Minister of Agriculture took the initiative to fund the Jute Genome Sequencing Project in efforts to turn around the ailing the jute industry.
Jute Draft Genome Sequencing means for improving the fibre length and quality, including colours and strength, making the high yield, salt-tolerant, and pathogen resistant jute within the reach of the country.
Genomes encode all the information about the features of humans, plants, animals, and the simplest living organisms like bacteria and the viruses. Simply, genome is the total information repository.
Like humans, all the information of a plant such as seed quality, nutrition, fibre production, disease resistance, and growing condition are encoded in its genome. If the information can be decoded, it is possible to improve the plants characteristics, the researchers said.