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GM crops will benefit farmers by Prakash Chandra


 

Keats’ lament of "tears amid the alien corn" aptly sums up the debate on genetically-modified (GM) food. The latest to join this swirling controversy is the humble brinjal, with the government’s genetic engineering approval committee clearing its GM avatar, Bt brinjal. Bt (for Bacillus thuringiensis bacteria) makes toxins that are lethal to insects. GM crops use this to incorporate into plants a gene that helps produce a bacterial pesticide protein, which enables the plant to protect itself from pests. Almost 40 per cent of the brinjal produced in India is destroyed by the fruit and shoot borer (FSB). In spite of this India remains the world’s second-largest producer of brinjal.

Bt brinjal uses the Cry1Ac gene to express an insecticidal protein to make the crop resistant to FSB. This helps reduce waste considerably, and farmers could expect to rake in an additional Rs 4,000 crores annually.

But try telling this to the critics, whose concerns range from masked multinationals holding poor farmers to ransom to giant brinjal mutants devouring bewildered humans. It’s only natural for the introduction of any new crop strain to raise suspicion. One fear is that GM crops could limit biodiversity and eat into the country’s gene pool. But GM crops by themselves hardly limit biodiversity as much as conventional agriculture does! Even something like wheat that we all take for granted is actually a product of natural genetic engineering: it has seven additional chromosomes from a different species with which it crossbred before man even thought of agriculture!

There is enough sound science and experience backing agricultural biotechnology. And in any case, the insertion of a couple of genes is, in many respects, a much simpler genetic modification than is sometimes made in conventional breeding. Even the vitamin Riboflavin — used in most vitamin supplements — is now routinely synthesised using a gram-negative bacterium, and no one’s complaining.

There can be no denying that agriculture could do with a leg-up to meet the demands of an exploding population, and that this must involve agronomy, ways of controlling pests and diseases, and environment-friendly measures.

GM crops are the best bet yet for this, and it’s unfortunate that critics should blindly adopt a zero-tolerance policy towards a technology that has so much potential. So where does one draw the line? One way of going about it is to make the good, the bad and the ugly sides of research on GM crops available to the public so it can make informed choices. But dismissing GM crops as an outlandish idea would be doltish. For it could very well be that, as physicist Stephen Hawking once said, "People in 50 years’ time will wonder what the fuss about GM food was all about".