Bollworm in Gujarat Bt cotton: Scientist says data wrong

“They have collected the surviving larvae — there would always be 10 resistant bollworm larvae out of every 10,000 — and have conducted tests on them. Such tests will always show resistance,it doesn’t mean there is across-the-board resistance to Cry1 Ac,” Kranthi told The Indian Express,adding that “I have written about it to GEAC”.

Monsanto has said in a press note that during field monitoring of the 2009 cotton crop,Gujarat Monsanto and Mahyco scientists detected unusual survival of pink bollworm to first-generation,single-protein Bollgard cotton.

“Test confirmed bollworm resistance to Cry1Ac,the Bt protein in Bollgard cotton,in four districts in Gujarat: Amreli,Bhavnagar,Junagarh and Rajkot. To date,no insect resistance to Cry1Ac has been confirmed outside the four districts in Gujarat,” the note says.

The company says this has been reported to the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) and that Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech (MMB) has been conducting field monitoring research across India since 2003 in collaboration with the CICR and other agricultural research.

Incidentally,Kranthi,winner of first International Cotton Scientist of the Year award of UN’s Cotton Advisory Committee last year,is credited with a model that shows how resistance to Bt protein will slowly grow with the surviving larvae inter-mating and growing in numbers.

“That study is for American bollworm,not pink bollworm where the larvea would generally become weak due to resistance effort and will not survive. Nowhere in the world is pink bollworm known to have survived after developing resistance to Cry1Ac,” Kranthi says.

If it is surprising why the company that pioneered Bt technology has announced what could well be construed as bad news by detractors of the genetic technology,in a written response to The Indian Express,Monsanto has cited transparency as the reason.