Small farmers in India will soon have a cheaper, safer and more effective option for growing one of India’s favorite foods: genetically modified eggplant, developed with Cornell’s help, which continually expresses a naturally occurring insecticide derived from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). ”The Bt eggplant will be the first genetically modified food crop to be released in the whole of South Asia,” said K.V. Raman, Cornell professor of plant breeding. ”The impacts could be really dramatic.”