The Supreme Court lifted an eight-month ban on field trials of genetically-modified food crops on May 8 subject to certain well-meaning provisos.
This judgment deserves to be heralded as a step in the right direction: the common man would now have a wider choice of foods to meet his nutritional and dietary needs. This list of food staples includes eight major crops that feature in every household across the country.
The apex court had temporarily halted large-scale field trials of GM crops of rice, maize, potato, brinjal, mustard, tomato, okra and groundnut in September last. By revoking its ban, the court will now facilitate a potentially wider spread of foods.
Take Bt-Brinjals, for example. The fruit- and shoot-borer (Leucinodes orbanalis) is the most destructive insect pest affecting brinjal. This pesky insect produces a small larva that bores through the shoots of the plant and feeds on the young and maturing fruit, rendering it inedible, discoloured and unfit for the market. Being a 150-180 day crop in which harvesting starts after 60 days, brinjal gives 20 pickings during the crop's lifetime.
Farmers tend to spray twice or even thrice between each picking to combat the deadly borer and as a result pile up 60 odd doses of spray for just one crop! On average, farmers end up dousing around 1.4 kg of pesticides per hectare on brinjal, which is way higher than, say, 200 gm for paddy.
The GM varieties of brinjal have been shown in trial after trial to be able to ward off this insect pest substantially. Brinjal cultivars that had been top performers in various climatic zones of the country had been incorporated with the gene that produces an endo-toxin produced by the ubiquitous soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt. This gene synthesises a protein toxic to the fruit- and shoot-borer that drastically reduces useage of the deadly pesticides by 80 per cent.
The far-reaching implications from this technological innovation go beyond reduction of farming expenses due to fewer sprays. Farmers' health is significantly improved through lesser exposure to harmful chemicals. The endo-toxin gene from the bacterium that is cobbled to the brinjal plant produces the toxin against the devastating borer all through the life cycle of the crop, ensuring good overall protection, as opposed to external sprays that have a tendency to be ineffective for a variety of reasons (not covering the entire plant, degraded by the elements, wash off from dew and rainfall leading to land and ground water contamination).
Non-target