India: BT brinjal opens new avenues for farmers and consumers

The landmark decision of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, on October 14 to allow the release of BT Brinjal has been viewed by some as the government’s commitment to opening doors to new technologies, while others are viewing it with suspicion and call it a hasty decision.

The success of BT cotton, where within seven years, over 80% of the farmers have adopted the technology gives confidence about the BT technology, raising farmers’ expectations. However, one must keep in mind that cotton is a non-food crop and thus has concerns related only to environmental safety. BT brinjal, being a food crop, has to be adequately tested for food safety in addition to environmental safety. There is an ongoing debate about whether it should be labelled, thus giving consumers the choice to make their own decisions.

The fruit and shoot borer (FSB) is the common name of the insect Leucinodes orbonalis. It is spread in South Asia, South East Asia and in Africa. FSB infests and damages shoots and fruits (and thus the name of fruit and shoot borer) throughout the life cycle of brinjal plants— from the nursery stage to the fruit harvesting stage.

BT brinjal is a transgenic crop developed through technology similar to BT cotton. The transformed plants carry an additional gene from environment friendly soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (BT), thus providing in-built protection against FSB. This Bacillus thuringiensis has been frequently used as a biological measure to control insect pests by farmers and no negative effect has been reported so far.

As and when FSB larvae feed on BT brinjal plants, they ingest BT protein. In the alkaline pH (9.5 & above) of insect gut, it is solubilised and activated by proteases, generating toxic fragment. This disrupts digestive process and causes cell lysis and leakage of mid-gut contents, resulting in the death of the larvae. An important point to note here is that BT protein acts as mid-gut toxin and thus has practically no impact on other insects or humans with acidic pH in the gut.

To ensure that the benefits of this technology reach resource poor farmers, Mahyco (Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Co Ltd) has shared the technology with reputed public research institutions like the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, and the University of Agricultural Science, Dharwad. The backcrossing of material...


Source: financialexpress.com

Publication date: 11/23/2009

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