Protests sprout ahead of new field trials of India’s first GM foodcrop

The seeds of Bt brinjal developed by Mumbai-based Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company, a subsidiary of multinational seed major Monsanto, contain a foreign gene, cry1Ac, derived from a soil bacteria, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). The toxin-producing gene from the bacteria kills fruit and shoot borer (FSB), the most common insect pest that devours about 50 per cent of brinjal crop in the country. Its incorporation into brinjal is said to be toxic to FSB and thus reduces reliance on pesticides.

Orissa officials claim they came to know about OUAT being the site of field trials only when the GEAC in May this year wrote to the university’s vice-chancellor. The university is now waiting for the criteria of the test as well as funds from the IIVR to begin a belated trial over a 2,000 sq m plot in Bhubaneswar.

Completion of the trials would lead to commercial cultivation of Bt brinjal sometime in 2011. But even as OUAT scientists gear up for the field trials, anti-GM activists and farmers in the state are up in arms, saying it would bring doom to over 150 indigenous varieties of brinjal in the state. “We would gherao the agriculture minister and OUAT. If necessary, we would uproot Bt brinjal saplings,” says Debjeet Sarangi of Living Farms, an anti-GM group in Orissa, adding the state Government and institutions like OUAT could have refused the GEAC offer of field trial.

“If the state Government is not able to stop illegal cultivation of Bt cotton in the districts of Raygada, Bolangir and Kalahandi, how can it ensure that bio-safety protocols are followed for the cultivation of GM foodcrops like Bt brinjal?” asks Saroj Mohanty of Paschim Odisha Krushak Sangathan Samnwaya Samiti.

... contd.