The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) has waved through a private proposal for genetic engineering in rice crops in the state, but the State Government will stick to the ban it had imposed on Genetically Modified (GM) crops within the state, Agriculture Minister K P Mohanan said.

On 5th July, Hon Justice Prabha Sridevi, Chair of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board of India, and Hon Shri DPS Parmar, technical member, dismissed Monsanto’s appeal against the rejection of their patent application to the Patent office for “Methods of Enhancing Stress Tolerance in plants and methods thereof.” The title of the patent was later amended to “A method of producing a transgenic plant, with increasing heat tolerance, salt tolerance or drought tolerance”.

A strong pitch for genetically-modified (GM) crops revived again in the top quarters of the UPA with agriculture minister Sharad Pawar batting for it on Wednesday in the wake of the government’s decision to push the food security bill through an ordinance.

Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has warned against opting for genetically modified (GM) food crops in the name of providing better nutrition.

The Union government has put on hold the clearances of field trials of certain genetically modified crops (GM), after it inadvertently put them as ‘approved’ on the Environment Ministry’s website recently.

The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), India’s apex biotech regulatory committee constituted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests on last Tuesday put on its website the decision of its 117th meeting held in March, clearing field trials of GM rice, wheat, maize, castor and cotton for the upcoming kharif season. The clearances were subject to the submission of ‘no-objection-certificate (NOC)’ from the respective state governments.

Eight years after genetically modified Bt cotton was introduced, following which 10,172 farmers killed themselves, state agriculture minister Ramakrishna Vikhe-Patil told dna that it was a mistake.

The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee, under the environment ministry, has given clearances to a few companies and research institutes to conduct field trials for genetically modified rice, wheat, maize, castor and cotton. This is a welcome development after a dreary period during which the ministry announced a moratorium on the commercial release of Bt brinjal after it had been cleared via extensive evaluations by around 200 scientists and experts from over 15 public and private sector institutions.

Calorie consumption and dietary quality among small-scale farmers in India significantly improved over a 7-year-period due to cultivation of genetically modified (GM) cotton, according to new research. [...] The researchers used data from a survey of over 500 randomly selected small farm households conducted from 2002-2008, and found that growing GM cotton crops increased farm yields and incomes, enabling these farming households to afford more and better food. [...] The researchers concluded that although GM crops alone may not solve the hunger problem, they may be an important component in a broader food security strategy.

Amid hue and cry over crop diversification, area under the Bt cotton crop has witnessed a stagnation. With the Punjab Agricultural University not being able to do much to increase the area under crop, it has started researching on better variety of guar crop with little hope to give an alternative to the wheat-paddy cycle. Since Bt cotton was introduced in 2005 in Punjab, area under cotton has not witnessed any dramatic increase even as some affects were seen during recent years in cotton market. [...] Best performance of Bt cotton crop was witnessed in 2006-07 when 5.73 lakh hectare area was under the crop and the worst performance was in 2010-11 when only 4.7 lakh hectare was under it.

Gene flow from a transgenic plants has remained a contentious issue. In the absence of experimental data, the task to pinpoint exactly as to how much is the potential risk, especially in centres of diversity, becomes daunting. The GM industry has often used lack of experimental data to show there is no cause for concern. It has happened in India, in the case of Bt cotton, and more recently when the moratorium on Bt brinjal came in 2010. John Samuels of the Novel Solanaceae Crops Project, Penzance, Cornwall, UK, has raised some valid concerns, based on available data, in an excellent paper published in Trends in Biotechnology