Sowing the Seeds of Change: India’s Biotech Boom Goes Beyond the Bean

Image Source: Business Standard

India's agricultural biotechnology sector is witnessing a historical shift, with latest advances and increasing demands to take the biotech drive to more crops. Learning from the success of GM soybean worldwide, there are calls for a strong, science-led strategy in introducing biotech crops.

Key Highlights:

Historic Genome-Edited Rice Release: India has launched genome-edited rice varieties—DRR Rice 100 (Kamala) and Pusa DST Rice 1—based on CRISPR-Cas technology. The varieties have the potential to yield 30% more, have increased drought and salinity tolerance, massive water savings, and lower greenhouse gas emissions, making a huge step forward for food security and climate resilience.

Policy Debate over GM Soybean: While India has been holding back on GM soybean, farmers and experts urge a rethink on policies to increase productivity, decrease import reliance, and provide economic security to farmers. Increasingly, demands for stringent research, open regulation, and citizen participation are being heard.

Legal and Regulatory Trends: The Supreme Court is to hear seminal cases involving GM mustard, India's first GM food crop to be approved, illustrating the perpetual conflict between scientific advancement and green activism. The government is formulating a national policy to strike a balance between biosafety and innovation.

Farmers Call for Biotech Access: Farmers of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana publicly called for quicker uptake of biotech opportunities, noting that slow access places Indian agriculture behind the rest of the world. They point to the success of Bt cotton as evidence of the potential of biotechnology.

State Initiatives and Startups: Maharashtra and other states are creating new policies to boost agricultural biotechnology, and startups are raising capital to create new bio-inputs, indicating a healthy ecosystem for biotech development.

Source: Business Standard (India), ISAAA, PIB, Economic Times, Niche Agriculture