Indian plan to destroy GM cotton crop seen failing
Date: 02-Nov-01
Country: INDIA
Author: Thomas Kutty Abraham
AHMEDABAD, India - India's plans to destroy genetically modified cotton are unlikely to succeed because nearly 70 percent of the crop has already entered the market, officials said yesterday.
Earlier this month, several hundred farmers in the western state of Gujarat were ordered to destroy their genetically modified cotton crops because the government does not allow commercial production of GM crops.
The farmers won a reprieve this week when a federal committee reversed the decision and told state authorities to buy the crop because it did not want to punish them for having unwittingly planted the bacillus thuringiensis cotton, also called BT cotton.
"More than two-third of the BT cotton grown (illegally) in Gujarat has already gone into the market since it is an early maturing variety. There is now little scope for confiscating the cotton sold," P.K. Ghosh, Gujarat's principal secretary of Forests and Environment, told Reuters.
Prashanta Kumar Ghosh, adviser in the federal Department of Biotechnology, said it would be possible to recover the seeds and the lint that were still with the farmers but it would be difficult to retrieve the cotton that had entered the market.
Authorities now plan to launch an awareness campaign in Gujarat, India's largest cotton growing state, to prevent re-sowing of BT cotton in the 2002/03 season beginning June, officials said.
The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) has ordered retrieval and destruction of the seeds and said that once final plucking was done, the plants or crop residue be uprooted and burnt and the fields be sanitised.
The issue of genetically modified cotton is of crucial interest to Indian farmers. Though India is the world's largest cotton-growing country, the per-hectare yield is only around 300 kg compared with the world average of around 650 kg.
India does not allow commercial production of genetically modified (GM) crops, but has allowed a few companies to carry out field trials under government supervision.
Environmental activists have called for suspension of field trials and production of gene-modified cotton until more studies are done on potential health and environmental hazards.
"We'll keep a watch in the next season. There are certain specific characteristics like the size of the plant and the branches and colour of the flower based on which they can be suspected to be transgenic and then tested," Prashanta Ghosh said.
Officials said it would also be difficult to get rid of BT cotton because the company that had supplied the banned seeds in Gujarat may have sold the seeds to farmers in western Maharashtra, southern Andhra Pradesh and northern Punjab states.
"Since the company had undertaken commercial production of seeds in Andhra Pradesh, it is possible the seeds have been used by growers in other states," Arvind Aggarwal, Gujarat's Agriculture Commissioner, said.
(With additional reporting by Hari Ramachandran in New Delhi).
