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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | These two issues could put the brakes on the Bt cotton story -G Seetharaman

These two issues could put the brakes on the Bt cotton story -G Seetharaman

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published Published on Jan 23, 2018   modified Modified on Jan 23, 2018
-The Economic Times

"Open any boll here and you'll see it's destroyed," says Ganesh Shere, a farmer at a village called Jamb in Yavatmal district, about 160 km from Nagpur, in northeast Maharashtra.

He walks along the length of his bone-dry, four-acre cotton field and splits two dozen cotton bolls, with a stone or his fingers, to reveal the damage done by pink bollworms, which have become resistant to the genetically modified (GM) cotton variety he uses.

His yield this year has only been 200 kg, less than 5% of what he produced last year. Shere, a 61-year-old former police sub-inspector, pegs his losses at Rs 2 lakh.

Maharashtra is the state with the largest area under cotton cultivation in the country and Shere is among the lakhs of farmers who depend on the cash crop. The loss caused by the pink bollworm infestation have raised questions about the sustainability of GM cotton, which accounts for over 90% of all cotton grown in the country. Bt cotton, as GM cotton is known, is the only commercialised GM crop in the country. Monsanto 1.23 % introduced its first-generation Bt cotton, called Bollgard I (BG-I) in 2002 and Bollgard II (BG-II) in 2006, the latter of which is still the de facto GM cotton variety.

Traditional hybrid seeds are a result of cross-pollination of two different but related plants, but GM hybrid seeds involve the artificial insertion of a gene from a different species. For instance, BG-II contains two genes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (hence Bt cotton) and BG-I contains only one gene.

They are supposed to provide immunity to the plant from pests like American and pink bollworms. GM seeds are mostly either pest-resistant or herbicide-tolerant, the latter of which is still not legal in India. Despite the wide adoption of Bt cotton, India has been wary of GM food crops, withholding its nod for brinjal and mustard.

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The Economic Times, 21 January, 2018, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/agriculture/the-brakes-are-applied-on-the-bt-cotton-story/articleshow/62583116.cms


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