Inaugurating the workshop, Dr. Jayprakash Narayan, MLA & National President, LokSatta Party spoke on the “Importance of adopting novel technologies in agriculture”. According to him “The phenomenal success of Bt cotton has clearly shown the need for GM technology to deal with problems being faced by Indian agriculture sector.” “Biosafety concerns can be clearly addressed by scientific institutions in the country as effective capabilities are available with us.” He said, in today’s world technology is changing rapidly and if we don’t move with the changing times we will be left behind and the world will pass by us. Countries like China and others capitalized on the evolving technology and improved the living conditions of their people and created more jobs. Today India is lagging behind, despite having 12% of the world’s cultivable land, conducive conditions for farming, resourceful farmers. We are importing oils, pulses etc., and being deficient in agri produce is a shame situation. The need of the hour is to decide judiciously on the technology we need to adopt. The decision on which technology is appropriate and beneficial to us can be arrived at by the experts in that field and scientists and not through street protests and by politicians. Our farmers adopted BT Cotton, today India is the second largest cotton producer in the world and will be the biggest exporter of cotton in days to come. At the same time we should not blindly accept every technology that comes our way, he added.
Global population will grow from roughly 7 billion today to 9.3 billion people by 2050 and India's population will grow to 1.3 billion by 2017, which will create new demands for foodgrains in terms of quantity, quality and affordability. This necessitates the existing agricultural output to be doubled against odds like thinning ratio of arable land to population, sparse water availability and changing climatic conditions. The food production level needs to roughly double from its present level to keep up with population and economic growth.
To meet this challenge the agricultural sector needs innovative solutions, biotechnology being one of them. Biotechnological interventions could be applied to conventional agricultural practices to enhance our crop productivity especially through genetically modified (GM) crops. The number of countries growing these crops has also increased
over the years. The major GM crops grown are maize, soybean, cotton, canola, papaya and tomato. Since expansion of cultivable area is almost unattainable in our country, we need crops that can produce higher yields on the same amount of land, creating a cost-effective option for farmers and consumers. It would also mean higher yields with fewer resources, and that means cost savings.
In 2012, a total of 17.3 million farmers (up from 16.7 million in 2011) planted biotech crops in 28 countries. Over the last 15 years, biotechnology has significantly increased global production of soybeans by nearly 100 million tonnes, corn by 160 million tonnes, cotton lint by 12.5 million tonnes and canola 6.1 million tonnes. Plant biotechnology is a modern advancement of traditional plant breeding which helps in transferring desired traits between plants more quickly and accurately than is possible in conventional breeding.
Despite the gains made possible by the technology, debates among various stakeholders and interest groups have ignited what is perceived as controversial. After “green revolution”, the “gene revolution” is the most awaited development which society needs today. This will improve input efficiency and build economic benefits that will flow to the wider community.
Dr S.J Rehman, Principal Scientists and Head, AICRP on Biological Control, Agriculture Research Institute, ANGRAU Hyderabad, underlined the importance and issues facing GM technology and explained in detail the procedure for the conduct of confined field trials
Dr C Kameswara Rao, Executive Secretary, Foundation for Biotechnology Awareness & Education (FBAE), addressed various myths which confront this technology like GM crops are unsafe, Farmers use more pesticides on their biotech crops, Field trials of GM crops will result in uncontrolled release of GM organisms
Dr. B Sesikeran, former Director, National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) and Chairman, Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation (RCGM) spoke on the dynamics of accepting new technologies.
Dr. S.M Balachandran, Principal Scientist, Biotechnology, Directorate of Rice Research (DRR), Hyderabad shared the extraordinary experience of Golden Rice.
Dr. Anand Kumar, Director, Dept of Biotechnology, explained that biotechnology did not merely mean bt-cotton. He highlighted that this technology is not limited to cotton only, its applicable to corn, papaya and many other crops. We must look at the benefits that other traits such as yield enhancement, drought tolerance, herbicide tolerance etc biotechnology has to offer.
Ms Naomi Stevens – Global Head of Market Acceptance- Seeds, Bayer Crop Science focused on the Global adoption of Plant Biotechnology and the benefits accrued from it & emerging new technologies
Participants of the workshop included eminent scientists from various research institutions, public and private sectors and farmers. Institutions engaged in food safety assessment also participated. The workshop provided useful insights on the emerging novel technologies imperative for the revolutionizing Indian Agriculture.
