The Hindu Business Line : Mahyco offers Bt brinjal knowhow to varsities

Tech transfer
These State agricultural universities would use Mahyco's material for backcrossing with their already developed brinjal varieties.
Mahyco sourced the cry1Ac gene construct for its Bt brinjal mainly from Monsanto.

New Delhi , July 9

So far, it was the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the State agricultural universities (SAUs) who were providing basic breeder material and technology to domestic private seed companies.

But now, for the first time, a private Indian player — the Jalna-based Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company (Mahyco) — is offering the gene `event' embedded in its genetically modified (GM) brinjal to the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore (TNAU) and the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad. These SAUs would use Mahyco's material for backcrossing with their already developed brinjal varieties.

GM brinjal contains a foreign gene, cry1Ac, derived from a soil bacterium, bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). This gene synthesises a protein toxic to the fruit and shoot borer (FSB), a destructive insect pest. Its incorporation into brinjal is said to confer the crop `built-in' resistance to FSB, reducing reliance on spraying pesticides.

Mahyco sourced the cry1Ac gene construct for its Bt brinjal mainly from Monsanto, the US life sciences major that also has a 26 per cent stake in the former.

"The entire transformation, which means fitting the gene construct in the right place of the brinjal genome, was done at our Jalna research centre. The ownership of this unique event vests with us," said Mr Raju Barwale, Managing Director, Mahyco.

This event (`EE-1') was integrated into eight of the company's own brinjal hybrids (MHB 4, 9, 10, 80, 99, 11, 39, 111).

In addition, Mahyco is supplying the EE-1 event to TNAU and UAS for backcrossing with their popular brinjal varieties. They include `Co-1', `PLR-1', `MDU-1' and `KKM-1' (developed by TNAU) and `Manjari Gota', `Udupi Gulla', `Malapur local', `Kudachi local', `112-GO' and `Rabkavi local' varieties of UAS. Significantly, farmers can use these varieties over succeeding generations, unlike Mahyco's hybrids that have to be bought for every fresh sowing.

"We have transferred this event to the SAUs, on which no royalty will be charged to farmers. The question of royalty arises only if the universities undertake commercial sales, which is not so now," said Mr Barwale. He refused to divulge whether any one-time lumpsum payment had been negotiated with the SAUs, while stating that the transfer was facilitated through the USAID-funded and Cornell University-managed Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project II.

According to Mr Bhagirath Choudhary, a Delhi-based plant biotech management expert, "this particular technology transfer is a first-of-its-kind public-private partnership". But beyond that, it also highlights how cutting-edge farm research in the country is being increasingly private sector-led. The best indicator of the public sector's growing marginalisation is that out of the 59 Bt cotton hybrids released commercially till date and slated to cover over eight million acres this year, not a single one has been developed by ICAR or SAUs. Not the best scenario for the farmer, perhaps.

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