VietNamNet Bridge – Science and technology (S&T) has become a major factor in increasing productivity, reducing costs, and improving the quality of agricultural products, especially in the context of globalisation and international integration.

Harvesting flowers for export at Da Lat Hasfarm Company -- Photo: ND

Economic experts have said that if trade is considered the ‘feet’ to move Vietnam's agricultural products forward on the market, then S&T would be considered the ‘backbone’ for the agricultural sector to enhance its agricultural product value.

S&T creating breakthroughs in agriculture

After ten years of implementation, the biotechnology development programme for aquatic agriculture by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) during the 2005-2015 period has provided the market with high-quality breeds such as 10,000 third-generation catfish, freshwater red tilapia, tiger prawns and white-legged shrimp throughout different geographic regions. The programme has also developed technology processes for breeding rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), vaccine products and vaccine production technology for cobia and tilapia fish species, as well as commercial microbiological products and technologies for the production of intensive shrimp yields.

In addition to heightening the potential of the fishery sector, S&T also strongly impacts the livestock industry. In just a short time, the sector received almost 15,000 buffaloes, cows, and goats, nearly 2,400 pigs, and more than 500,000 differing kinds of poultry. Applying S&T in breeding and disease prevention has helped improve the survival rate of pigs under the Vietnamese Good Agricultural Practices (VietGAP) standard to over 99% and the proportion of buffaloes, cows, and goats breeding to 100%. The results are very encouraging in guaranteeing agricultural production quality to help Vietnam increase its agro-forestry-fishery exports output value to reach approximately US$31 billion in 2014, up 1.5 times the average of the 2010-2012 period.

Not only promoting the strengths in the field of fisheries and animal husbandry, S&T is also a solution to restructuring the cultivation sector and modern rural construction throughout the country.

According to records from the national target programme on biotech development during 2011-2015, the programme has created 42 varieties using molecular markers, cell technologies and 33 transgenic lines; manufacturing processes for eight probiotics to prevent fungi nematodes and bacterial damages to pepper, coffee, cotton, and corn; and five kinds of biological products served in processing and preserving fresh vegetables.

It is remarkable that all the mentioned above varieties have been undergoing testing and have also been widely applied across the nation, contributing to improving productivity and product quality, as well as generating income of hundreds of million VND per ha, two to three times higher than conventional models. In particular, Vietnam is among five countries in the world to have successfully cultivated caterpillar fungus (Ophiocordyceps sinensis), a rare medicine which has high economic value.

Recently, the MARD has also recognised assay results in five varieties of GM maize comprising of BT11, GA21, MON98034, NK603, and TC1507 to transfer to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental for biosafety licensing. This is an important milestone of the agricultural sector and also a significant measure to remove difficulties for the production of animal feed.

A long-term strategy is needed

In regards to the agricultural and rural S&T strategic development plan during the 2011-2020 period, the MARD has set goals, including that S&T achievements contribute 40% of the total GDP of the sector by 2015 and 50% by 2020; and that high-tech agricultural products and agricultural products using high-tech applications account for 30% of the value of agricultural major products in 2015 and 50% by 2020. However, in order to accomplish the above objectives, scientists stress the need to provide S&T knowledge to farmers through the transfer of S&T achievements, in addition to mounting the State-owned S&T research system with the private sector, co-operatives, and farmers through specific incentives.

Practice has proven that, strengthening S&T in agricultural development not only expects State investment and also needs to attract and encourage enterprises to actively participate further in research, transfer, and connect with farmers and institutions to raise the number of S&T enterprises to several times higher than that of the existing figure (currently, there are 132 enterprises recognised as S&T ones, including 18 high-tech agricultural application enterprises – data from the MARD, 2014). It is a new incentive for highly applicable scientific research, focusing on post-harvest technologies.

In the future, agriculture will implement the autonomy and self-responsibility policy to public S&T organisations, while innovating management mechanisms and fiscal regimes towards managing output products of S&T applications to develop advanced technologies in line with the globalisation trend, and closing the gap between Vietnam’s agriculture in particular and Vietnam's economy to the world in general. The desire to achieve S&T advances and highly effective S&T application models is not only an aspiration of farmers but also an urgent demand of the economy, to make science and technology not only the backbone of agriculture but also the key to ‘wake up’ all the existing potentials of agriculture, farmers and rural areas of the country today.

Nhan Dan