The Chinese government is funding a lab at a Kenyan University to train students and conduct agricultural research on GMOs including gene cloning, molecular crop genetics and improvement of tissue culture, according to a report in CoastWeek.

Egerton University is a public university in Kenya with its main campus in Njoro, near the town of Nakuru.

A crop molecular laboratory is under construction there in collaboration with China’s Nanjing Agricultural University. The lab is backed with a $1 million in funding from the Chinese government, CoastWeek reported.

The goal is to solve problems of low crop productivity among the small- and large-scale farmers in Kenya, according to Richard Mulwa, an Egerton professor heading up the establishment of the facility.

Five experienced Chinese scholars will help manage the facility’s tutorial and research activities once it becomes operational in 2016, Mulwa said.

“The lab can be used for developing genetically modified foods once we start the operations,” he said.

The program hopes through the lab to train 500 crop technologists, scientists and small-scale farmers annually from Kenya and other African countries on innovative systems of crop production and management.

The two universities hope within five years to establish an African Center for Research and Graduate Training in Agriculture capable of train 100 doctoral candidates in agriculture-related disciplines.

Of the doctoral candidates, 20 percent will be from China, 40 percent from Kenya, and 40 percent from the rest of Africa, Mulwa said.