India's scientists are developing drought-tolerant crops and submergence-tolerant rice, a key agricultural research institute official said here today.
Deputy director general of Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Dr Swapan Dutta said these crops, termed 'precision-designer crops', are now under the evaluation stage.
"It (submergence-tolerant rice) can come in for commercial release within the next two to three years", he told reporters after attending a multi-stakeholder workshop on ensuring food security and agriculture sustainability through advances in agriculture.
Referring to submergence-tolerant rice, he said that during submergence (by rain or flood waters) metabolic functions and photosynthesis of these plants would be very low. "This plant will easily survive for two weeks (under water)".
During submergence, these plants would produce ethanol, giving them energy during that period. Once water recedes, these plants, which would appear pale during submergence, would rejuvenate themselves and be back to their normal functioning.
On drought-tolerant crops such as tomato, brinjal, cabbage and maize, he said, "we have to design a crop in such a way that these plants would only activate these genes under drought or salinity when it's needed. When it's not needed, the plant does not have to activate these genes".
"So, now we are working on some kind of switch-on and switch-off machinery", he said.
Dutta said these plants would activate genes through a specialised promoter when they perceive some kind of stress like drought, high or low temperature and high CO2 levels. Crop plants would have a master gene which would contain many genes so that plants can survive by regulating the entire system.
"With the constant changes in climate change, salinity-, drought-, low or high temperature-tolerant crops and submergence-tolerant rice will be required and work is in progress to develop these for the benefit of our nation", he said. It would take five to ten years for commercial release of such crops.
Climatic risks are common in Indian agriculture, he told the workshop, organised by All India Crop Biotechnology Association, in association with the University of Agricultural Sciences here.
"It has been well documented that crops attain only about 25% of their yield potential because of the detrimental effects of environmental stress", Dutta said.
Dr Shantu Shantaram, senior research scholar, Princeton University, said, "today over 90% of biotech crop farmers who are from developing countries enjoy multiple benefits of biotechnology — higher yields and productivity, insecticide savings and greater peace of mind".
"The future belongs to this technology and India must not be left behind and become dependent on other nations. India can be a global food contributor. Agri-innovations offer environmental sustainability as well as economical sustainability and can play a major role in enhancing productivity in the same acre of land", he said.
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