The European Union (EU) has developed a new timber regulation that will require all timber and wood products entering the EU market to be genetically tested to identify their true origin.
The objective of the DNA tracking system is to ensure that only timber products acquired from legal sources are supplied onto the European market.
Already, the DNA technology for tracking timber has been enacted into law in Germany and it is being implemented by the authorities.
Professor Bernd Degen of the Thünen Institute of Forest Genetics in Germany made these known at an international training workshop on wood anatomy technologies for tracking legal timber at the Forestry Research Institute of Ghana (FORIG) at Fumesua, near Kumasi over the weekend.
It was organized by the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO) in collaboration with the Thünen Institute of Forest Genetics of Germany and FORIG to build the capacities of timber producing countries in Africa on the DNA application in tracking legal timber.
It was also to transfer the technology of genetic approaches to timber producing countries in Africa so that they would not be found wanting when the EU regulation came into effect.
Forest scientists, researchers and experts from Cameroon, Congo Brazzaville, DR Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Central African Republic (CAR) and Ghana, attended the three-day workshop.
Professor Degen said already, the Thünen Centre of Competence on the origin of timber, had been established in Germany, which was registering and checking timber importing companies on the origin and legal sources of products they imported into the country.
He said at the moment, the Centre had studied over 1,600 species from different parts of the world to identify their DNA properties and true origin.
Professor Degen said the introduction of the technology to track timber sources was not to prevent exporting of wood and timber products into the EU market, but was to ensure that the trees were cut from legal sources.
Professor Victor Agyeman, Director of FORIG, said Ghana had over the years been implementing regulatory regimes, aimed at ensuring that trees were produced legally.
He stressed the need to put in place efficient systems that would help reduce illegal exploitation of timber in Ghana.
Source: GNA
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