The Sunrise’s efforts to communicate for development, part of its mission, have paid off after one of its editors was awarded one of the top awards in agriculture reporting this weekend.
Henry Lutaaya, scooped the best online reporters award, one of the top four categories in a competition organised by the Uganda Bioscience Information Centre (UBIC), an agency of the National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO). The inaugural competition, was organised to recognize outstanding reporting on the science of agricultural improvement using living organisms.
Although often associated with agriculture, Biotechnology as a field of science has become a popular science in solving challenges affecting not only crops but also humans in spheres such as preventing or curing diseases and cleaning the environment as well.
As Dr. Barbara Wendiro, the coordinator of the Industrial Biotechnology Centre at the Uganda Industrial Research Institute, and one of the UBIC media awards, prophesied that industrial use of biotechnology will allow industrialists make more money than farmers.
Although the adoption of biotechnology in agriculture remains obstructed by legal challenges, the science is being used in the medical field as well as in industrial processes.
