Mexico needs to consolidate the production and quality of its agricultural food products to compete in the European Union (EU) and, at the same time, diversify its exports in order to depend less on the United States market.
The increase in exports is currently one of Mexico's great challenges in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the pressure exerted by the derogatory comments made by US President Donald Trump in Paris yesterday, stated Dr. Luis Alberto Lightbourn, the director of the Mexican biotech company Bioteksa.
Lightbourn spoke yesterday at the International Summit of Biotechnology and Industrial Revolution that concludes tomorrow in Paris.
"We at the Lightbourn Institute have discovered a group of specific genes that give quality, productivity, safety and, above all, sustainability in crops," said Dr. Lightbourn.
He also said that Mexico was a pioneer in the discovery of heterotrimeric G proteins that are the basis of cell signaling.
"We have performed studies in capsicum annuum (bell pepper) and have discovered a series of biogenetic pathways that help us optimize crops," he said.
Lightbourn gave as an example the biogenetic advances in the cultivation of pepper as a sample of the potential of Mexico's agricultural food sector and its capacity of making products and exporting them to the world.
In his dissertation in Paris, he spoke about the protein characteristics and the properties of biogenetic products.
"I am an enemy of genetically modified organisms. In other words, I am an epigeneticist by nature and all our research at the Lightbourn Institute and our Bioteksa production line is focused on epigenetics, towards the non-genetical modification of organisms and towards food safety with measured sustainability," he said.
"We must measure the carbon, nitrogen, and water footprint. We really have to know the implications in each of the production processes from sowing or transplanting to harvesting," he added.
"We have two bioethical principles that we have to respect: first, make no harm, and second, do not hinder. Do not harm the relationship between soil or environment, plant, water and atmosphere and do not hinder the processes that the plant itself develops to defend against all the aggressive changes of all these elements."
Lightbourn stressed that "plants are a sessile organism, that is, they can not walk, move or look for water, shade, heat or cold. They have to withstand the adversity that is presented to them where they are and the opportunities to achieve an optimal physiology."
"Unfortunately the industry has produced mechanisms, substances, and procedures that, not only interfere, but also damage the fundamental processes that the plant itself has to defend itself. This responds to economic interests, large-scale sales of many products that have sustained the agrochemical industry through many years," he said.
It's time to stop marketing and the economy to start being authentically sustainable and achieve authentic innocuousness, even if it does not respond to the economic schemes of the agrochemical industry.
He said that every kilo of product or food of every agricultural productive process had to be measured in terms of water consumption. "Measuring production in tons per hectare is obsolete, now we have to measure it in tons per cubic meter of water used," he said.
Source: EFE