What is the roadblock?

Though Swaminathan submitted his report in 2004, its formation is stuck as a result of a power struggle between two ministries — the environment ministry and the department of biotechnology. Both ministries want to control the panel.

What’s coming up ahead?

There is a whole range of crops in the lab trial stage in the private sector. In the public sector, there are seven transgenics which have crossed the RCGM-stage of approvals — American bollworm-resistant cotton, yellow stem borer-resistant rice, fruit and shoot borer-resistant brinjal, leaf curl virus-resistant tomato, protein-enriched potato, and salinity-cum-drought tolerant tomato and mustard. If all goes well, these would be ready for the farmers’ fields by 2008-09.