SECOND EXPERT GROUP MEETING ON BINASIA
24-25 JANUARY 2006, BANGKOK
COUNTRY REPORT: MONGOLIA
Ts.Oyunsuren Ph.D
Center for Biotechnology, Institute of Biology,
Mongolian Academy of Sciences,
Ulaanbaatar 51, Mongolia 210351
,
Biotechnology in Mongolia
Mongolia, being an agricultural country, has a long history of traditional biotechnology. Traditional biotechnology has been playing an important role in the fulfillment of the basic needs of nomads daily life. Mongolian herdsmen have a good experience in the improvement of domestic animals properties. A new era of biotechnology started in 1988 when the Government of Mongolia declared the biotechnology as one of the priority areas of S&T. This policy of our Government was developed in several programmes and documents such as the Biotechnology sub-programme elaborated in 1998 and the National Programme of Science and Technology Development Towards the Year 2010. The Government emphasizes upgrading of biotechnology capacity building for strengthening research and development in this field.
Unfortunately, due to social, economic difficulties and other reasons, the development of biotechnology is very slow in the country. However, despite the very limited funding, some achievement have been obtained over the past years. In terms of priority for biotechnology, the Mongolian Academy of Sciences has established a laboratory of plants cell culture where in vitro micropropogation, somaclonals of useful, rare and endemic plants are being pursued. Research work on transgenic plant development through genetic engineering has been initiated in the Laboratory. In the
Institute of Veterinary where the Japanese International Cooperation Agency ( JICA)’s project is being implemented for upgrading technical and human resource capacity and for promoting R&D, several products, such as animal tissue derived drugs Neohystol I, II,III, Neovarilizat, wide spectrum antiparasitics, diagnostics for animal Brucellosis & Ku fiver and other diseases are being produced by using methods of biotechnology. Biotechnology techniques like artificial insemination, embryo transfer and breeding are being applied in domestic animals’ (sheep, cashmere goat, cattle) research and practice. Biogas generation holds great promise as an alternative source of energy in rural area and some research has been initiated in this area. Diagnostic kits for major infectious diseases like hepatitis, tuberculosis, HIV as well as non-communicable diseases would be in the market by next year. Also, HBV vaccine will complete its trial.
The National Biosafety Framework, to meet the requirements of the Cartagena protocol, was established at the Ministry of Environment. It is in process of developing a database on biosafety issues, regulatory and administrative system, risk assessment and management programmes.
The National Bioethic Committee was established in 2004 to ensure the review of experiments involving human subjects, teaching bioethics in life sciences in universities and organizing national workshops to promote bioethics in the country.
At the present, recognizing the potential of biotechnology to the economics and well-being of the society, the Mongolian government elaborates a master plan on intensification of biotechnology development to promote research and development of biotechnology as well as the technology transfer. The master plan aims to ensure an improvement of Traditional Biotechnology, specially related to processing of dairy, leather, wool and other agricultural products through introduction of new technology, and an intensification of development of different trends of Modern Biotechnology.
The Government initiated the project named “Green Wall’ to combat desertification, to make green our environment through tree plantings in arid and semiarid regions of the country. For this purpose a large scale in vitro micropropgation
of tree planlets has been promoted. In meantime, an application of tissue culture technology at grass root level, an utilization of its technique for enrichment of plant genetic diversity have been initiated recently.
During the last years, the Mongolian Government has put emphasis on the human-resource capacity building in S&T. As a result of this policy, a number of government scholarships for higher education both inside and outside the country increased significantly.
Mongolia in BINASIA
Among the BINASIA member countries, the biotechnology competence and capacity in terms of infrastructure, human resource, expertise, investment and etc. differ substantially. In such situation the potential benefits from biotechnology can be harnessed through international and regional collaboration and partnerships which will have key issue to promote biotechnology development, to facilitate knowledge-sharing, technology development, technology transfer and development and promotion of biotechnological industries. We understand the BINASIA , one of biotechnological cooperation in the region through an IT-driven mechanism, will link biotech-community providing biotechnology information, promoting international R & D collaboration for technology development and for this purpose, BINASIAnet, a web portal, is being developed in cooperation with the participating member countries.
The Center for Biotechnology, which was designed as the Focal point for BINASIA, endorses the proposal of BINASIA to promote Biotechnology in Asia. Our participation in BINASIA is being taking advantage of Biotechnology network in the region which helps the development of subject more efficiently and intensively through exchange information and ideas.
Being the member of BINASIA, the BINASIA-Mongolia National Workshop was successfully organized on November 5-6, 2004 in Ulaanbaatar. The overall objective of the workshop was to review and exchange information and knowledge regarding the
current status and issues of biotechnology among participating bodies with a special focus on national R&D policies and future trends. The workshop was held to deliberate on the IT based BINASIA, to strengthen mongolian participation in BINASIA and international collaboration. The workshop was good opportunity to gather specialists, experts and government officials involved in biotechnology to discuss and share information on biotechnology R&D. After the Workshop, various biotechnology information database have been set up, however, the contents and continues sustainability of these data were various.
By BINASIA/KRIBB support, the national biotechnology homepage was developed, which unified entire available database to facilitate their application and assessment to the users. The Center for Biotechnology is willing to propose a proposal for the establishment of Biotechnology Information Unit which will provide computer links within different institutions to give easy and free access of information to all the people. For this purpose, training of researchers, students and other people on methodology, and assistance in some technical facilities, in order to incorporate BINASIA in country level network will be needed.
To promote BINASIA activities, the member countries are interested to organize regular executive meetings, workshops, scientific meetings and training seminars for networking researchers, laboratories, stakeholders, private companies and etc, and for strengthening international collaboration. It is important that BINASIA will be not only bioinformatics center for an e-communication within member countries, also in other Asian countries. To share information among different countries, BINASIAnet will be more accessible through networking and linking other programmes such as AKBIN, existing in Asia. Initiation of joint research programmes in common interested areas of technology transfer will make BINASIA more successful and beneficial for development of Asian countries.