LAHORE: The Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology (CEMB), Punjab University, and the Punjab Seed Corporation (PSC) on Friday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the promotion and sale of transgenic varieties of cotton seeds.

Syed Hussain Jahania Gardezi, who became a former agriculture minister after the dissolution of the cabinet with the resignation of Sardar Usman Buzdar as the chief minister in the afternoon, attended the signing ceremony and congratulated the CEMB scientists on the development oftransgenic varieties (CKC-1, CKC-3, etc.).

He said that the development of new varieties of cotton is the need of the hour so that the cotton crop could cope with climate change and tolerate pest attacks for reducing the production costs for f armers.

PSC Managing Director Fazlur Rehman said his entity would multiply the transgenic cotton seeds at its farms for their provision to cotton growers.

CEMB Director Ahmed Ali Shahid said that the institute has so far developed six new transgenic varieties of cotton, while work is going on to discover more varieties to enhance the production of the crop.