A Rs4,000-cr pop for brinjal economy

Almost 40% of the brinjal produced in India is destroyed by the fruit and shoot borer.
Attacks by leucinoda orbonalis (the biological name for the FSB borer) is so widespread that production has barely increased by 9% in the last 10 years despite a 15% larger cultivation area.

Yet, India remains the world’s second-largest producer of brinjal, accounting for nearly 26% of the global production. China tops with 30% global share.

Potentially, the approval to Bt brinjal, India’s — and world’s first — genetically modified variety, is expected the change all that, and can very well catapult India into the numero uno producer.

India’s brinjal economy is estimated to be close to $2 billion (Rs 9,600 crore) with 1.4 million farmers cultivating it annually in nearly 550,000 hectares (1.4 million acres).

The technology, developed by multinational Monsanto, was taken up by Mahyco and two public institutions — Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore and University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, Karnataka.

In addition, scientists at Cornell University, US, at the University of Philippines and at the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) were also involved in the development of the technology.

So far, India has approved only one genetically modified crop — Bt cotton — which was allowed to be cultivated commercially in 2002.

The runaway success of this — more than 85% of cotton farmers have shifted to it — must have influenced the government decision.

India’s Bt cotton production has more than doubled to more than 3.1 milion bales of 170 kg each) in the last five years.

The annual value of the biotech cotton crop, based on the sale price of Bt cotton seeds in 2008-09 is estimated at Rs 1,500 crore by BioSpectrum, the Bangalore-based biotech magazine.

With farmers quick to adapt modern technologies, there is high probability the cotton story will be repeated in brinjal.

Bt brinjal seed companies, experts said, could expect annual seed sales in excess of Rs 500 crore over the next few years.

The adoption of Bt brinjal is also expected to reduce waste considerably and farmers could expect to rake in additional Rs 3,600-4,000 crore annually.

“This is a great news for the country’s biotech agriculture sector,” said K K Narayanan, coordinator of biotech industry association acronymed ABLE.

Narayanan’s company, Metahelix recently got the regulatory approval for a new variety of cry1C gene, similar to the one used in Bt brinjal and cotton, and developed by global giant Monsanto for use in various crops.

The net gains for farmers are expected at Rs 4,000 crore, including annual savings of about 40% of input costs involved in the use of pesticides.

The regulatory approval marks a new beginning for India’s $300 million biotech seed industry.

Nearly a dozen local companies and agricultural research institutions have been developing 12 to 15 other genetically modified crops.

The regulatory barrier crossed by the country’s first biotech food crop is expected to spur more action on this front, experts said.

The approval to Bt brinjal was given at a meeting of the genetic engineering approval committee in the Ministry of Environment and Forests in New Delhi on October 14.

The decision has to be ratified by the ministry and notified in the government gazette and licensing arrangements worked out with the technology developers.

Anti-genetically modified food activists had upped the ante in recent months, forcing many of Indian and foreign food companies operating in the country to make a pledge against the use of such foods in their packaged product pipeline.

“The committee had considered the extensive reports on its biosafety trials and approved it for environmental release,” Ranjini Warrier, director in the ministry and coordinator for the committee, said after the meeting.

The approval was given to a variety of Bt brinjal developed by Mahyco Monsanto, a subsidiary of US crop giant, Monsanto.

The committee had used results from 11 large-scale field trials of the Bt brinjal crop conducted under expert supervision in different parts of the country.

Extensive field trials were done in Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra at five places. Six popular varieties —- Kudchi, Malapur, Udupi, Gulla , Rabakali and Goa 112 —- cultivated locally were modified genetically and used in the field trials.

Only three of the 28 members of the committee opposed the commercial release of Bt brinjal variety.

Jairam Ramesh, the minister for environment and forests, has said the government may take some time to give final approval for commercial introduction by reviewing the product’s biosafety data.

The ministry can at the most delay the introduction by some time. The GEAC has 28 members who are agriculture experts from different public institutions in the country. And the committee has studied extensive data generated by field trials done under the supervision of government’s agricultural scientists.

Sridevi Lakshmikutty of the Coalition for a GM-free India group told national news agency, Press Trust of India, said, “We believe there are many risks associated with genetically modified brinjals that need to be tested. The committee is relying on data from Mahyco and the data have not been checked by an independent source,” she added.

PM Bhargava, one of India’s well-known geneticists, too, has been cautioning against the introduction of Bt brinjal citing the lack of availability of adequate biosafety studies.

In fact, he has been heading an expert committee set up by the Supreme Court of India to monitor the genetically modified product approval process.

The committee was set up by the court while hearing a public interest litigation against genetically modified crops.

The writer is group editor of Technology Review. Views expressed are personal.