Professor of IPB: Indonesia Needed Ten Thousand of Plant Breeders
The number of plant breeders in Indonesia was very little. This was because the assumption of being a breeder would have a bleak future. To produce new varieties, a breeder took up to decades. No wonder if the plant breeder would work on the plant that was short-lived.
With the number of farmers as much as 31.71 million people (BPS 2013), Indonesia should have 10,620 plant breeders. The assumption was, every single person of plant breeder served thousand to three thousand farmers.
“Indonesia currently has only 600s plant breeders scattered in various universities, research institutions of government and private. So it still takes 10 thousand of plant breeders to accelerate the increase in the national food production,” said the Professor of the Faculty of Agriculture (Faperta), Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), Prof. Dr. Surjono Hadi Sutjahjo in the press conference of the pre scientific oration of Professor in the Campus of IPB Baranangsiang, Bogor, Thursday (25/8).
He said, compared with Japan and some other Asian countries, Indonesia was so far behind in producing new high yielding varieties and was ranked 4th after China, Korea and Japan. Indonesia was able to produce 1,085 new varieties (from the years of 1984-2014) or an average of about 81 varieties per year. As for China and Korea, the provision level reached 2-4 times higher than Indonesia.
“Japan is already 20 times higher than Indonesia. Every year they could spend thousands of new varieties,” he said.
The role of the higher education institutions such as IPB and other universities was very important to produce the plant breeder candidates at various levels. In 1997-2005 in IPB there was the Study Program of Plant Breeding for the undergraduate level. Currently in IPB, there’s only the Study Program of Plant Breeding and Biotechnology at the levels of S2 and S3 under the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, the Faculty of Agriculture.
IPB itself only had 12 staff members of active educators in the plant breeding as well as the practitioners of the plant breeders belonging to the Division of Genetics and Breeding, the Department of Agronomy and Horticulature, the Faculty of Agriculture of IPB.
“It needs the support of the policy to increase the number and the quality of human resources of plant breeders such as the improved facilities, the physical laboratory, the experiment station, the farm research as well as the supporting personnel. Allocate specific funding for the development of the education and the research in the plant breeding,” he said.(zul)
