Very exciting input traits are in the pipeline. For example, water use efficiency trait which will reduce the water requirements of the crops considerably and can help the vast number of farmers who cultivate rainfed crops in the country in more than 100 million hectares. Similarly, the nitrogen use efficiency trait which will reduce the use of nitrogenous fertiliser on the crops by an estimated 30 per cent. Another trait that is waiting in the wings is the salt tolerance trait which can help farmers grow crops in saline soils of more than 20 million ha in India. These three traits can make a huge difference to Indian agriculture.

In a clear case of conflict of interest in clearing GM crop trials, a member of the environment ministry’s statutory appraisal body and senior agriculture ministry scientist Swapan Kumar Datta has pushed and got clearance for trials of GM rice to be conducted by his wife, Karabi Datta, faculty with the botany department of Calcutta University in which he too will be participating. [...] Datta, when contacted by TOI, admitted that he was also involved in the GM rice trials with his wife but denied any conflict of interest, claiming it was only an academic project at the moment.

The Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha and civil society organisations demanded that state government stop immediately, all genetically modified field trials in Karnataka. The organisation, at a press conference here on Monday, demanded that state government, on the lines of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, write to the Central Government, informing it that they will disallow such trials in the state. A local TV channel and Greenpeace documented the aftermath of a GM field trial by Monsanto last Thursday in the village of Banihatti in Sindagi taluk of Bijapur district and accused the American multinational seed giant of violating biosafety rules.

India is paying a heavy cost by not adopting the genetically modified crops in a big way and the farmers should be given opportunity to reap benefits of the technology like in case of BT cotton, experts with the global agri-research bodies ISAAA and ICRISAT have said. [...] The ISAAA chief said though the Bt crops seeds cost higher than the normal ones, the overall input cost involved in cultivating GM crops is less than the latter as it does not involve deep ploughing and use of expensive fertilisers.

Leading agricultural research institutions Monday warned that extensive use of genetically modified cotton seeds was destroying farming bio-diversity and jeopardising the livelihood of over four million cotton growers in India. ”Indian farmers grow 90 percent of hirsutum (species of cotton), of which 90 percent is GM cotton. Desi cotton will only survive if yields and fibre quality will improve and the maturity period reduced,” said a joint statement by Karnataka’s University of Agricultural Science, Dharwad, company bioRe India Ltd. and Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, Switzerland.

Research in the domestic agri-biotech industry seems to be strangled by multiple ministries and state governments, with both public and private sector companies grappling to tackle contrasting regulations. The biotech industry has been demanding the creation of a single regulator in contrast to current three — the ministry of agriculture, the ministry of environment and forests and the ministry of science and technology. The industry is of the view that if the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India Bill is passed, there will be a predictable regulatory mechanism.

Bt brinjal fared poorly in comparison because its farmers are not so powerful as a lobby. Those who grow brinjal grow other crops as well. They do not control a lot of land and earn no forex. They are also not organised as cotton farmers are. There are only about half a million hectares of brinjal grown in India — cotton is closer to 10 million hectares. The number of brinjal farmers is around 1.4 million scattered all over the country unlike the greater concentration of cotton farmers in Gujarat and Maharashtra. For such reasons, brinjal farmers got no such support from any of the states. The GEAC science, in this case, was successfully attacked by a Union cabinet minister.

Ten months after Rajasthan signed its extraordinary memorandums of understanding with seven biotech seed companies, the state government finds itself caught in a cleft stick. Owing to a series of protests by farmers’ organisations, the government has thought it prudent not to execute the MoUs. At the same time, with pressure mounting from some of the seed companies to formalise the agreements, it has been unable to put together a policy framework for the public-private partnerships it wants to implement.

The yield was 463 kg per hectare when the Bt cotton area was 5.6% in 2004 and reached a mere 506 kg per hectare when the area under Bt cotton increased to 9.4 M hectares at 85% of the total 11.1 M hectares. Other concerns relate to the enhanced problems of sap-sucking insects such as leaf hoppers, aphids, whiteflies and thrips on the vast majority of susceptible Bt hybrids. New pathogens such as ”leaf streak virus,” Myrothecium and Ramularia started affecting the new Bt hybrids. Insect populations of mealybugs, miridbugs, gall midges, mosquito bugs and safflower caterpillars, which were hitherto unknown as pests, suddenly emerged as concerns after the introduction of the new Bt-cotton hybrids.

For more than a decade, since before 2002, the American bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera, has unleashed terror in cotton fields by destroying more than 50% of cotton yields in India. Bollworm caterpillars had become resistant to all insecticides recommended for control and none of the chemicals worked, even when mixed as cocktails at doubled concentration. Investment, especially on insecticides, increased by leaps and bounds while yields had declined just as much. Within four years of its introduction, Bt cotton changed the story in India. Yields doubled. Insecticide use was reduced to half of the previous level. Several researchers estimated the net average gains from Bt cotton to be in the range of $76 to $250 per hectare.