No reason to stop Bt brinjal field trials
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Farmers have gained from GM tech. The naysayers seem averse to scientific progress percolating to agriculture
The polarised debate over genetically modified (GM) crops in India is back in limelight. The advocates and dissenters of GM technology broke open the debate following the Centre’s approval given for confined field trials to new brinjal varieties for biosafety evaluation by Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) in seven States.
With this decision, the gene modification of more than 200 verities of rice, wheat, maize, castor and cotton, among other crops, will no more be a distant reality, inflicting a severe blow to the Basudeb Acharya Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture and the Supreme Court-appointed Technical Expert Committee (SCTEC) which had called for a complete halt of all field trials of GM crops for a 10-year period.