Procedural issues continue to hinder commercialisation of GM crops in India

Two decades after Bt cotton made its debut in India, commercialisation of genetically modified crops remains mired in complex procedural rules

Last month, after a considerable gap, the Haryana government gave Mahyco a no-objection certificate (NOC) to seed major field trials of a herbicide-tolerant (HT) and insect-resistant BT cotton variety, called BG-3 RRF.

In a normal world, field trials of a new variant would have been a routine exercise that seed companies need to conduct to test a variant before its commercial release or further evaluation.

But given the complexities, delays and political controversy that have marked the commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) crops in India, this relatively small move is being seen as a significant step forward in some quarters.

Seed industry players said the latest application for BG-3 RRF field trials was first submitted in 2016 to the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), but was subsequently withdrawn because things weren’t moving forward.

Mahyco re-submitted its application in December 2021, after which the company, according to current procedures, had to get an NOC from each state where it wanted to conduct field trials.

The company approached Haryana for trials to be conducted in Kharif 2022. Field trial data for Punjab was already available with the authorities (having been conducted before 2016).

“But, it seems, this year too will be wasted because cotton sowing has already started in several places in north India and after this trial, the data will have to be submitted to GEAC, which will take its own time since the Committee, according to our information, hasn't met for a long time. This means practically another year lost,” Ram Kaundinya, director general of Federation of Seed Industry of India (FSII), told Business Standard.

The seed association and some experts said the approval process has been made this complicated so as to deter companies from developing GM variants, putting the whole science into turmoil. The irony of this, however, is that illegal sales of HTbt cotton have grown.

“Farmers won’t wait for the official release of new Bt cotton variants, which is why around 20 per cent of the total cotton acreage in the country is under illegally grown HTbt cotton,” Kaundinya said.

For seed companies, the trouble started back in 2010, when the then government, while putting a moratorium on further trials of Bt brinjal, had issued two other notifications.

One was to change the nomenclature of GEAC from Genetic Engineering Approval Committee to Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee. The second was to make it mandatory for all applicants to get NOCs from each state in which they want to conduct field trials of GM crop variants cleared by GEAC.

The first change, pro-GM scientists said, made political interference in the final approval of GM crops more pronounced. The second pushed the entire burden of GM approvals to the states, which do not have the expertise to handle such complicated and technical issues as GM technology.

As a result, the entire structure of GM approvals and trials was stalled. Though some progressive states did approve field trials, those were few and far between. Subsequently, with little forward movement, several companies withdrew their applications for field trials. Thereafter, in 2017, the entire clearance process underwent another change.

Pro-GM groups said that the government, through an informal directive, said that unlike the earlier system of GEAC clearance being subject to NOCs from state governments, the new system required companies and institutes to first get an NOC for field trials from states <before> seeking GEAC approval.

“This overturned the entire process and states, being ill-equipped to handle issues related to field trials of GM crops in the first place, particularly when the GEAC had not cleared them, stopped giving NOCs altogether. As a result, for the past five or six years, no field trial of any GM crop has taken place in the country,” said Bhagirath Choudhary, founder director of the South Asia Biotechnology Centre (SABC).

He said the entire process has been made so complicated and slow that companies fear venturing into this. “That is why in the last 33 years, just one crop (cotton) has been approved for commercial usage,” Choudhury said.

Meanwhile, demand from farmers is growing as attacks of pink bollworm, one of the biggest pest infestations facing cotton farmers in India, are rising by the day.

The result, Choudhury pointed out, is that cheap fakes of BG-3 are proliferating the market, causing losses to all.

He said a strong regulatory mechanism proposed under the draft Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India Bill should be again considered to ensure that science does not suffer. But the Bill has been in cold storage since 2008.

On the other hand, G V Ramanjaneyulu, executive director, Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA), feels that unless there is a regulatory system that caters to the requirements of 21st-century India, curtailing field trials is the only way to ensure that biosafety protocols and norms as far as GM crops are concerned are not violated with impunity by seed companies.

“Also, one must remember that the Supreme Court-appointed high-powered committee on GM crops and subsequent parliamentary panels had found that there is no need for HT crops in the country. So, unless there is an intention to bypass the panel’s recommendations, states should not allow field trials of GM crops,” Ramanjaneyulu said.

The SC panel had said that over time, HT crops would most likely exert a highly adverse impact on sustainable agriculture, rural livelihoods, and environment, and that the panel found them completely unsuitable in the Indian context.

Kaundinya of FSII said that as a middle path, the Centre could explore the possibility of notifying some sites within ICAR-Centres or agriculture universities where field trials of GM crops can be conducted.

“We at FSII have asked for NFTS—notified field testing sites – for the last two years to at least move things forward; otherwise, there is no end to the stalemate,” he said.