Commercial use of Bt brinjal soon

The long wait for genetically modified (GM) brinjal to hit the market may be over this week as the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), the country’s biotechnology regulator, will meet tomorrow in New Delhi to take a decision on commercialising the crop.

“The GEAC will evaluate the safety and environment data before giving its approval for mass commercialisation of Bt Brinjal”, Shantu Shantaram, senior research scholar, Princeton University, said here today.

Talking to reporters after a one-day workshop, “Ensuring Food Security and Agriculture Sustainability through advances in Agri-Innovation”, organised by the University of Agriculture Sciences and the All India Crop Biotechnology Association here, he said seed companies such as Mahyco, the University of Agriculture Sciences and the Tamil Nadu Agriculture University had completed field trials and animal testing and were waiting for the GEAC’s approval to commercialise the crop.

Agronomic and field trials for Bt brinjal to check its effectiveness against pests, as claimed by its developer Mahyco have been carried out at 11 sites. The GEAC will go through the report of an expert panel while considering the proposal.

If approved, Bt Brinjal will become the first GM food in India and will be the first GM brinjal to be approved anywhere in the world. In India, BT cotton is the only commercially approved biotech crop.

GM crops are those in which genetic material (DNA) is altered for some perceived advantage either to the producer or the consumer. Bt Brinjal has been tweaked to resist a pest called shoot borer. Apart from Bt Brinjal, there are 40 other GM food crops, including papaya, canola, rice and tomato, which are in various stages of field trials.

Bt Cotton, the only biotech crop technology approved for cultivation, helped India become the world’s second-largest producer and exporter of cotton by doubling productivity within seven years of the launch in 2002. It is noteworthy that for the seven-year period (2002-2008), there was a 150-fold rise in use of Bt cotton in India compared with the 74-fold increase for global biotech crops during the 13-year period (1996-2008).