December 20, 2006
by TV Padma,
SciDev.Net
The chequered history of Bt cotton in India — marked by pest
resistance and farmers' suicides — has polarised opinions over
the technology, reports TV Padma.
'Bt and the beast' is how cotton scientist Keshav Raj Kranthi
refers to the controversial genetically modified cotton so
widely planted in India. The 'beast' is the American bollworm —
a moth larva that devours cotton bolls — while Bt is its
nemesis, a protein crystal from the bacterium Bacillus
thuringiensis.
Four years after the Indian government allowed farmers to grow
Bt cotton, which is genetically modified to contain the Bt
toxin, the government's department of biotechnology and the
biotechnology industry say it has led to decreasing use of
insecticides and improved yields.
But another picture of India's Bt saga is emerging — one that
points to a pressing need for an enquiry into just how
successful genetically modified (GM) technology has been in
India.
There are warning signs, for instance, of the bollworm's
resistance to the Bt toxin. The media and nongovernmental
organisations point to a worrying rate of suicide among cotton
farmers in parts of India, though a direct link between the
deaths and Bt cotton has not been established. Further, the
monitoring of where and how the cotton is grown is also poor,
and a market for legal and illegal, fake and real, Bt cotton has
sprung into being.
Given GM's chequered history in the country, and the polarised
opinions of the pro-GM government and industry, and anti-GM
activists, a serious, inclusive scientific debate is often
impossible.
Chequered history
GM technology arrived in India in 1995, when the US biotech
giant Monsanto teamed up with India's Mahyco to import Bt cotton
seeds, which would be crossed and repeatedly backcrossed with
local varieties to ensure they could adapt to local conditions.
Much of India's GM debates stems from this point — the
technology is seen as an attempt by multinational companies to
control India's agriculture and markets. And poor public access
to initial trial data simply worsened matters (see
'Indian GM research 'lacks focus and transparency'').
The government-funded biotechnology department has consistently
promoted GM technology. Nine GM crops involving seven genes are
under field tests for insect resistance. Others, such as rice,
chickpeas, mustard, aubergine and tobacco, are being developed
and tested for improved nutritional content, and resistance to
salinity and drought, as well as for creating edible vaccines.
In 2002, India allowed farmers to cultivate Bt cotton — the only
GM crop commercially grown in India to date (see
'India approves cultivation of GM crops'). But by then, a
weak regulatory system meant that thousands of illegal Bt cotton
seeds had already been sown in Gujarat, western India. This
prevented regulators from monitoring Bt cotton plantations, to
stop the cross-flow of pollen to non-Bt crops, or to check
whether illegally grown Bt cotton respected the refugia
standards — cultivation measures that help to offset the
build-up of resistance to Bt.
There is now a stand-off between supporters of the technology
and activists and who accuse the government and industry of a
lack of transparency, which they say has prevented a serious,
inclusive scientific debate on the issue.
"With no transparency over GM crops in India, no one, farmers or
the state agriculture department, is told anything properly,"
says Suman Sahai, convenor of the Delhi-based nongovernmental
organisation Gene Campaign. But officials from the biotechnology
department — who would not be quoted — deny the accusation,
saying the process is open.
Suicide and suffering
In 2003, cotton farmers in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh,
whose government had aggressively promoted GM technology,
suffered severe agricultural and financial losses and many —
including entire families — committed suicide. There was no
evidence to firmly link the cotton losses to Bt technology, but
in May 2005 Andhra Pradesh revoked permission to grow three
varieties of Bt cotton.
The repeated failures of cotton crops and another spate of
farmers' suicides in the central state of Maharashtra this year
once again put Bt cotton in the spotlight. The crop has failed
to meet promises, says Suman Sahai. He says that preliminary
analysis of Bt adoption data shows that in Maharashtra's
Vidarbha district, farmers growing Bt cotton accounted for most
of the suicides.
"Farmers are bound to react as the hype over increased yields of
Bt cotton during trials — claimed as 80 per cent over non-Bt
varieties — did not translate into a performance on the ground,"
biotechnology professor Nandula Raghuram of Delhi's Indraprastha
University, told SciDev.Net.
Signs of resistance
Over the past decade, 21 GM crops involving 42 modified genes
have been introduced in 21 countries. Among these, insect
resistance has been reported in four crops involving nine plant
genes.
Keshav Raj Kranthi, a senior scientist at the department of
biotechnology in the Central Institute of Cotton Research (CICR)
based in Nagpur, first drew attention to the inherent problems
with Bt cotton in India. In July last year, he reported that
toxin levels varied at different stages of plant growth and were
lowest in the cotton bolls, where the insect thrived (see 'Indian
GM cotton is 'inadequate'; enquiry demanded').
At an annual meeting of the Indian Academy of Sciences in Indore
last month, he revealed the emergence of Bt-resistant bollworms
in Indian cotton fields.
The area of Bt cotton plantations in India — 3.44 million
hectares — is thirty times larger than it was in 2002, said
Mahyco's managing director Raju Barwale at the meeting. In 2005,
planting Bt cotton cut the use of pesticides by 42 per cent, he
said. Yield losses went down and net returns increased by US$373
per hectare compared to non-Bt crops.
But a weak regulatory mechanism has led to the emergence of many
spurious varieties labelled Bt cotton, as well as unauthorised
companies selling the cotton in India, says Kranthi. "There are
four kinds of Bt cotton in India," he quips. "Legal, illegal,
fake legal and fake illegal."
"On average, 28 per cent of the illegal seed brands are non-Bt,"
he adds. Among samples collected and tested by CICR, only 26 per
cent of the Bt cotton was true first-generation hybrid, while 46
per cent was contaminated with non-Bt cotton.
When proper refugia standards are not followed, contamination
can result from the cross-flow of pollen between Bt and non-Bt
varieties. The result may be new genetic combinations that fail
to express the Bt toxin enough for adequate protection from the
bollworm.
Preliminary analysis by CICR in Nagpur, which has monitored
resistance to the Bt toxin for the past five years, shows that
one in every 667 bollworms in north India, one in every 440 in
central India and one in every 400 in south India is resistant
to Bt toxin.
More worryingly, it found that some 90 per cent of bollworm
larvae leave the field, causing potential contamination of Bt
cotton. "The bollworm is bound to develop resistance to the Bt
toxin in about 10 generations of crop," says Kranthi.
This is despite the Indian government's recommendation of
planting at least 20 per cent of a farm's cotton acreage with
non-Bt cotton as a way to slow down the build-up of Bt
resistance.
But Kranthi blames the government for blindly copying the US
refugia strategy. In fact the two countries do not even face the
same enemy: while the American bollworm Helicoverpa armigera is
the most common type of bollworm in India, in the United States
its close relatives H. virescens and H. zea are dominant.
An appropriate refugia strategy for India would be to plant five
rows of non-GM cotton around Bt cotton, Kranthi says. Other
measures could include growing African marigold — a well known
natural repellent against the bollworm — on two per cent of
fields.
Bollworm blues
In India alone, bollworm causes losses worth US$555 million —
despite yearly spraying of insecticides worth almost as much.
Cotton, grown by more than four million farmers, occupies only
five per cent of the country's total crop area, yet half the
pesticides used in India are applied to combat the bollworm.
Scientists have long struggled to tame the bollworm, which
feasts on 181 types of plants, including 69 crop species. As
Kranthi points out, it cost US$500 million to develop pesticides
against the bollworm, but it took the worm only five years to
develop resistance to them.
A single gene mutation is all it takes to make the worm become
resistant to an insecticide, he says. "Will the bollworm develop
resistance to Bt? Yes. The only question is when."
While Kranthi does not discard the potential of biotechnology,
he is concerned about the complacency surrounding the belief
that Bt has conquered the bollworm. An apt epitaph for the
bollworm is 'H. armigera: Born 330,000,000 BC, still alive' he
says.
Crucial failing
The government's efforts to usher in GM crops suffered more
setbacks in September, when the supreme court temporarily banned
further trials on new GM crops. This followed a public interest
petition urging the regulatory system to be foolproof before
permitting trials (see 'Indian
Supreme Court bans GM crop trials').
A month later, angry farmers' unions burnt trial plots of GM
rice in two northern Indian states. The protestors alleged that
an Indian company leased the farmers' plots for trials without
explaining the full implications of GM crops to them.
The protestors received unexpected support from rice traders,
who are worried that exports of India's famous aromatic
long-grained rice, basmati, could be affected if the fields are
contaminated by GM rice.
In the end it seems that the crucial failing of the Indian
biotechnology sector is its inability to communicate the pros
and cons of the technology in an unbiased manner to the public.
Even the country's biotechnology department implicitly
recognises this in its draft development strategy, released in
2005. "Several focused and well-directed measures are needed to
achieve public trust and confidence in biotechnology," it says.
Until that is achieved, the battle lines will remain. |