A laboratory report has confirmed that farmers in Maharashtra's Akola district indeed sowed banned herbicide-tolerant Bt (HTBT) cotton by way of protest last month, a state government official said Tuesday.
Last week, Greenpeace’s chief in India, Samit Aich, wrote a column in ET on genetically-modified crops. In this, he repeated an old green falsehood, that Bt cotton has failed to raise cotton yields in
Across the world, countries are turning their backs on GM crops; perhaps the coalition in the UK could learn something from them Britain wants GM food to be grown commercially. After years of encouraging
The second Indian Biodiversity Congress (IBC 2012) held at Bangalore earlier this month has called for a ban on field trials of Genetically Modified (GM) crops in India and a 10-year moratorium on Bt food crops. The three-day event, which witnessed a large turnout of scientists, conservationists, environmentalists, civil society groups and local communities from across the country, stressed the need to bring the regulation of biotechnological processes and products under the purview of the Biodiversity Act. For the purpose, the Department of Biotechnology should be brought within the Ministry of Environment and Forests, it suggested.
This paper describes the series of events which took place in India from the development of Bt brinjal to its initial approval by the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC)a to the declaration
An indigenous Bt cotton variety Bt Bikaneri Narma developed through a collaborative effort can no more be used for cultivation. A probe conducted by a five-member team, headed by Jawaharlal Nehru University
ICAR “shielding errant officials” by delaying the report In a damning indictment of the way some Bt cotton varieties were developed and commercialised in the country, a committee headed by Prof. S.K. Sopory, Vice-Chancellor of JNU, found that indigenous Bikaneri Nerma (BN) Bt cotton variety was contaminated by a gene patented by Monsanto. Having found lapses in the “BNLA106 event”, the committee has held as “invalid” the data obtained from bio-safety studies and field trials with BNBt as these were conducted with material that contained Monsanto’s “MON531 event”.
The Indian Society for Cotton Improvement (ISCI) has recently released a comprehensive book on "Bt Cotton Questions & Answers" authored by Dr. K R Kranthi, Director of the ICAR's Central Institute of Cotton
The objection raised by NGOs and other expert panels against Bt cotton have been “speculative, confusing and without any reasonable assessment of technological strength”, Parliament was informed today.
It will be a blow to Indian science, it says The Centre on Friday informed the Supreme Court that the recommendations of the Technical Expert Committee (TEC) seeking a 10-year moratorium on field trials on Genetically Modified (GM) crops will be highly detrimental and will not be in national interest. “Based on current overall status of food safety evaluation of Bt. Transgenics, including the data on Bt. Cotton and Bt. Brinjal examined by the TEC, and in accordance with the precautionary principle, the TEC recommends a 10-year moratorium on field trials of Bt. Transgenics in all food crops,” the TEC said in its interim report submitted to the Supreme Court. “Another factor is the possibility of contamination of non-GM food by GM food.”
Dual-use research of concern (DURC) is the research that is intended for legitimate benefits, but also carries a risk of being misused. In this article, the work related to regulation of dual-use influenza
