"This technology is apparently based on a concept which has been patented and termed "gene protection technology" by its developers (the Monsanto Company). Even if this concept is developed as a technology, it will be at least five to ten years before it hits the field," said Dr KP Gopinathan, director (research and development) of the Bangalore-based Monsanto Enterprises Ltd (Mel) research centre, in his keynote address at the conference.

Dr Gopinath, who is also a professor of the Indian Institute of Science (IISC), Bangalore, which has a tie-up with the Monsanto for the development of oral vaccine, said in fact, a very few of the thousands of patents filed by various groups had ended up as technology. Moreover, in a country like India, there were many regulatory bodies managed by various governmental agencies such as the department of biotechnology (DBT), Indian Council of Agricultural Research (Icar) and the department of environment, which were closely monitoring the benefits and potential hazards of any technology before it was implemented.

Any violation of guidelines laid down by these bodies would constitute a punishable offence. So long as the technology was beneficial to the Indian farmers, it should be accepted and implemented. The country should strive to achieve food sufficiency by utilizing the benefits of biotechnology, he said.

Dr Gopinathan said the country's population was expected to be 1.2 billion by the year 2025 and it was essential to produce sufficient, but nutritious food for the next generation. With the constant increase in the population and the limited availability of land and water resources, the per capita availability of both land and water have become highly restricted. The effects of the green revolution in the 1970s were slowly coming down.

Hence, the country should go in for biotechnology to enhance its agricultural production.

After centuries of improving the crop plants and domestic animals in the old fashioned way of breeding for desirable traits, the agricultural scientists took a big leap in the early 80s, to circumvent the uncertain and often lengthy breeding procedures by using the modern biological tools to transfer genes into plants and animals for the traits they wanted. With the advanced methodologies now available for the isolation of genes in their functional state and their successful introduction into living organisms so that the recipient organism acquired the characteristics conferred by the genes, this process designated as "transgenesis" was now a reality.

"We can improve the crop yield, increase the nutritional value of the food and even exploit plants to produce molecules of biomedical or commercial importance. For instance, genes encoding vaccine candidates have now been engineered into plants giving rise to edible vaccines. Antibodies and hormones expressed in plants have been shown to be effective in animals," he said.

Scientific studies are on to produce polymers and plastics through engineering genes in plants. One could soon visualise the production of coloured cotton. Tomatoes with an extended shelf life (due to delayed ripening) had already hit the markets. Crop plants harbouring genes conferring resistance to pests have been developed.

He said 30 million hectares of cultivated land was undertransgenic crops today. The country should not miss the opportunity of exploiting biotechnology for achieving self-sufficiency in food production, he added.