NAGPUR: Bt cotton may have taken almost 99% area under cotton cultivation in Maharashtra but, looking at the diminishing profit margins, the state government is planning to evolve other options to the genetically modified variety of the crop. The government feels it will reduce cultivation cost and increase profitability and sustainability of the crop for the farmer. State agriculture minister Radhakrishan Vikhe-Patil has asked agriculture universities to develop alternatives to Bt...

The Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) will set up an expert committee to look into patent violation issues concerning Bikaneri Narma, which was claimed to be the country’s first indigenous public sector-bred Bt cotton (genetically modified) seed variety.   Bikaneri Narma Bt Cotton also promoted as ‘completely indigenous Bt variety’ was developed by Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR), Nagpur, and University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, along with Indian Agricultural Research...

Flat yields for five years and rising insecticide use are jeopardising the success of Bt cotton technology Cotton has been the biggest success story in Indian agriculture since the Green Revolution. In a country struggling with stagnant yields in most crops, cotton has been the one bright spot. Production has soared from 13.6 million bales (each bale is 170 kg) in 2002-03 to 31.2 million bales in 2010-11—a figure that catapulted...

Indian cotton was once infamously plundered by the British to benefit their finished goods economy back home. The world-famous Dhaka muslin were woven with desi cotton. But while the foreign regime kept the Indian cotton alive, albeit for its own gains, independent India presided over its complete decimation. However, after about 50 years of domination of American cotton that had edged out the desi varieties for long, the Indian Council of...

The revelation by the developer of pest-protected Bt cotton Bollgard, Monsanto-Mahyco, that pink bollworm pest has developed resistance to the killer Bt gene, Cry1Ac, in parts of Gujarat, and the rebuttal of this by a government-funded cotton research institute have created a fresh, albeit avoidable, controversy around genetically modified (GM) crops. The Monsanto statement had claimed that during field monitoring of the 2009 cotton crop in Gujarat, the company’s scientists...