The Hindu Business Line : Bt brinjal: A lost cause?

In March 2002, when Bt cotton was approved for commercial cultivation, there was scant opposition to the Government’s decision. The few murmurs of protest from assorted NGOs and self-proclaimed farmers’ bodies were drowned by the actions of the ryots themselves. Their clamouring for the transgenic cotton seeds was indeed reminiscent of the early Green Revolution days, when the country’s premier agricultural universities reported frequent thefts and raids by farmers jostling for the new ‘magic’ wheat varieties.

Since its introduction in 2002, the area under Bt cotton in India has expanded from a mere 50,000 hectares to some 8.3 million hectares (mh), out of the total 9.6 mh sown to the crop this year. That represents a rate of technology diffusion surpassed perhaps only by the mobile phone — and, as was the case with the latter, something adopted voluntarily and not shoved down anyone’s throat.

Success story

Bt cotton’s success is also borne out by the fact that between 2002 and now, the country’s cotton lint output has more than doubled to over 30 million bales, with average yields rising from 300 to 550 kg a hectare. The real test came this year, when the combination of a prolonged dry spell followed by heavy rainfall in September (coinciding with the period of flowering and early square formation) was ideal for infestation by the dreaded American bollworm larvae.

“Bt cotton has clearly withstood that test, with hardly any bollworm damage reported this time. Yield losses, if at all, would be due to moisture stress and other factors unrelated to bollworm,” notes Dr K. R. Kranthi, Director of the Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR), at Nagpur.

Against this background of success, what is all the recent fuss over Bt brinjal about? For one, both these genetically modified (GM) crops basically incorporate the same foreign cry1Ac gene sourced from a soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt. This gene codes for a protein toxic to insect pests belonging to the lepidoptera order, which include the cotton bollworm and the fruit and shoot borer (FSB) in brinjal. The mode of action is similar in both cases. When the bollworm or FSB larvae feed on plants containing the cry1Ac gene, they also ingest the protein synthesised by it.

This protein then binds itself to the mid-gut of the larvae, disrupting their metabolic activity causing eventual death. The Bt proteins are toxic only to lepidopteran insects, simply because other organisms — human beings included — lack the specific receptors in their guts to bind these proteins.

Food crop logic

So why this caution in granting clearance to Bt brinjal? To put it differently: How have the various environment and so-called farmers’ organisations — with capacity to mobilise a few hundred people at most — managed to strike a chord vis-À-vis Bt brinjal, which they couldn’t for Bt cotton? If one were to conduct a straw poll among office-goers or go by the views expressed in letters-to-the-editor columns, the majority middle-class opinion would probably not favour giving the go-ahead to Bt brinjal. The dominant concern expressed is that brinjal, unlike cotton, is a food crop.

On deeper reflection, it is a specious argument. Cotton fibre, no doubt, is not eaten. But the oil from cotton-seed as well as the de-oiled cake remaining after its extraction are both eaten. While the oil may not be ‘harmful’ (as it does not contain protein material), the same cannot be said about the cake, which is a widely consumed animal feed.

Given that the milk we drink would have originated from buffaloes fed on Bt cotton-seed cake, we may very well have been ingesting this ‘poison’ since 2002! If nothing serious has happened still, the reason is simple. Our intestines cannot produce the receptor proteins (cadherin and aminopeptidase-N) to activate and bind the Bt toxins. Forget humans, even non-lepidopteran pests such as aphids, jassids, mealy bugs and beetles do not possess the specific gut receptors — which is why Bt cotton/brinjal can be ‘safely consumed’ by all these non-target organisms.

Moreover, in brinjal’s case, cooking studies show that the Bt protein degenerates — to the point of being undetectable — on roasting, steaming or even shallow-frying. In other words, you can safely enjoy the bagara baingan or baingan ka bharta from Bt brinjal.

Monopoly fears

Besides the safety angle, there is also the general fear over GM crops leading to creation of multinational seed monopolies. By that logic though, one should never use PCs, considering Microsoft’s and Intel’s virtual monopoly over the operating systems and microprocessors on which they run. There are surely better ways to deal with such problems than blocking technology outright.

The Indian experience with Bt cotton is quite revealing here. Initially, a 450-gm packet of Bt hybrid seeds, based on Monsanto’s proprietary gene construct, was being sold for Rs 1,600. But over time, the prices fell to Rs 650-750 — courtesy mainly proactive State Governments that forced Monsanto to accept a lower technology fee.

A less crude approach would have involved promoting competition through public-funded research. Rather than facilitating this, the activists instead trained their guns on the technology itself, thereby ironically helping perpetuate Monsanto’s monopoly. CICR’s Bt cotton varieties got released only this kharif season, seven years after the launch of Monsanto’s products. The release of Delhi University’s highly promising GM hybrid mustard has, likewise, been held up because of overzealous bureaucratic bio-safety regulations.

As far as Bt brinjal is concerned, the benefits from it to the farmer are obvious. Brinjal is a 150-180 day crop that starts giving fruit after 60 days, yielding roughly 15 pickings over its lifetime. To control FSB, farmers typically spray pesticides twice before each picking, adding up to 30-odd sprays.

What’s more, the pesticides are effective only against the larvae that are not inside the shoots or fruits of the plant. Once they bore into the shoots or fruits, the larvae plug the entrance holes with excreta and escape any insecticide sprays. Bt brinjal, by contrast, offers ‘in-built’ protection against FSB, significantly reducing the number of sprays along with increasing overall marketable yields.

For all the scientific arguments favouring it, however, the prevailing political environment does not look congenial for Bt brinjal’s release. In Bt cotton, the impetus for commercialisation ultimately came from the farmers, whereas brinjal has no such organised growers’ lobby.

Brinjal is cultivated in less than 0.6 mh, compared with cotton’s nearly 10 mh. Also, unlike say rubber in Kerala, the 9.6-million-tonne annual brinjal production is spread thin across many States. These dispersed farmers would probably be no match for the likes of Greenpeace and Vandana Shiva, who are better placed to influence both middle-class opinion and government policy in this particular instance.

( blfeedback@thehindu.co.in)

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