Commercial Seeds Set To Take Root: Expert

New Delhi, April 3: : India’s commercial seed sector is set for take off, a top plant biotechnologist has predicted. The assertion follows conditional approval given to the Maharashtra Hybrid Company late last week for marketing its Bt cotton. “You can expect significant new activity in the commercial seed sector,” plant biotechnologist at Tuskegee University and advisor to the department of biotechnology C S Prakash told FE on Wednesday. Here in India for a series of lectures at IITs and agricultural universities, Dr Prakash backs the conditions laid down by government, and was optimistic that the regulator would exhibit greater dynamism henceforth.

The optimism is well founded. Aurangabad-based Nath Seeds has already been licensed by a Chinese research institute, Biocentury Transgene Company. Nath plans to develop its own hybrids using the Bt gene. Two other cotton hybrid seed companies, Rasi Seeds and Ankur Seeds, have tied up with Mahyco Monsanto Biotech, to develop Bt cotton seeds. A a Hyderbad-based seed company too has evinced initial interest. “More choice for the farmers will naturally benefit them,” Prakash says.

Importantly, Dr Prakash backs the three year time frame of approval granted to Bt cotton. He feels that the regulatory system has to evolve over time and that there’s therefore “need to be cautious in the first instance”. The plant biotechnologist cautions against a replay of “the protracted regulatory foot-dragging of the type we’ve seen with Bt cotton”. He laments that the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee has got bogged down in non-scientific issues (such as assessing the economic viability of GM crops for farmers), and stresses on the need for the regulator to focus exclusively on knowledge-based aspects of safety of GM seeds. “Regulatory agencies are not the correct fora for discussing societal and ethical concerns, important though they are”, Dr Prakash insists.

The expert is unimpressed by fears about non-compliance of specified refuge guidelines by farmers. “In India, even in the densest cotton growing areas, farmers have not adopted a monoculture cropping pattern. Other crops such as vegetables are always grown along with cotton. Therefore, less than 100 per cent compliance is not a big deal. It’s only a few years down the line, when the proportion of Bt cotton increases, that this problem can emerge, but by then we should have different varieties of GM cotton which will help tackle the pest resistance problem,” he assures.

Dr Prakash has a message for governments. That they have a greater role...