The Central Government has consented for setting up of International Millet and Wheat Research Centre at Khamaria near Jabalpur. This Research Centre will be set up with cooperation of Mexico. Here research will be conducted for producing hybrid quality Seeds of Millets and Wheat. In view of the dwindling wheat production because of the increase in global temperature, the centre will research for producing hybrid quality millet and wheat Seeds...
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From approval to appraisal
The government’s subtle, but significant, move to divest the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) of its job of approving the genetically modified (GM) products and convert it into merely a GM appraisal body has taken the biotechnology sector by surprise. The Gazette notification to this effect replaces the word “approval” in the committee’s nomenclature with “appraisal”, thus making it the “Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee”. One obvious reason for doing so...
More »Fault Lines in the 2010 Seeds Bill by S Bala Ravi
The 2010 Seeds Bill that has been introduced in Parliament does address some of the major concerns in the aborted 2004 version, but strangely a number of important correctives – on regulation, consistency and punishment – that had been incorporated in the 2008 version (which lapsed in 2009) have now been modified or dropped altogether. What forces are pushing the government to act against the interests of India’s farmers? The third...
More »Efforts needed to raise farm output to ensure food security:PM
Concerned over large population still suffering from poverty and hunger, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday said more efforts were required to achieve higher productivity and growth in the farm sector that would ensure food security to the people of this country. "I am happy that the growth rate of our agriculture has increased substantially in the last few years. But we are still far from achieving our goal. We...
More »GM plants established in the wild by Richard Black
Build-up of different types of resistance could make it more difficult to manage the plants using herbicides. Transgenes present in 80 per cent of wild canola found by study Authorities had anticipated the existence of GM “volunteers” Researchers in the U.S. have found new evidence that genetically modified crop plants can survive and thrive in the wild, possibly for decades. A University of Arkansas team surveyed countryside in North Dakota for canola. Transgenes were...
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