Trilochan Mohapatra has taken over as the Director-General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the central agency that takes care of research in a variety of crops. In Hyderabad last week to attend a Regional Committee meeting of the Council, Mohapatra spoke about the importance of allowing GM research in food crops with necessary safeguards. With weathermen forecasting normal rainfall, he said States should make submergence-tolerant paddy varieties available. Excerpts:

How has the kharif season been progressing? And, what are your expectations?

As weathermen predict a good monsoon, we expect a good kharif this year. Good rainfall also means that some areas might get more rainfall. The States must be ready with submergence-tolerant paddy varieties. A large number of varieties can survive up to 15 days of submergence. Varieties such as Swarna Sub-1 can be handy for areas that witness flash floods and water logging.

A huge chunk of cotton is being grown in rain-fed areas despite advisories against this. What’s your advice to farmers and States on this issue?

Yes, we ask them not to grow cotton in such areas. Productivity is low under such conditions. They invest more on inputs such as seeds. Given this scenario, cotton should not be grown in places where you don’t have water. You need to reduce exposure to cotton. But this year, because of predictions of good rains, cotton can be grown.

The row over GM mustard points at the deep-rooted concerns on transgenic crops…

Yes, there are concerns, particularly in (GM) food crops. This needs to be addressed. We need to strengthen public awareness. Some of these apprehensions are not based on facts. Some of them could be based on hearsay and this needs to be discussed. If you don’t explain properly, apprehensions remain.

(While allowing trials in food crops,) we must adequately test. Before we take it to the consumption stage, we must address all bio-safety issues and ensure it is safe as we did with Bt cotton. Unless we do this, we should not release them for consumption.

Pink bollworm has developed resistance to Bt technology. How does the ICAR view this situation?

Resistance is bound to happen. You breed a variety against a disease. It will break sooner or later because the pathogen keeps evolving. That’s the reason you need to have a continuous process of research and development. You can’t stop evolution in insects completely but certainly you can slow down the process.

Wheat is facing a tough challenge in the form of climate change. Experts warn of a significant reduction in yield on the increase of every degree of temperature. How are we going to address this?

Terminal heat is a serious challenge. Last year, we’d witnessed this towards the flowering stage, resulting in a drop in production. If the temperature grows by one degree Celsius, production will fall by 10-15 per cent. We are working identifying donors to deploy them in breeding. We have got some lines with a certain degree of tolerance to terminal heat. In a shorter span of time we will have a variety that can have some level of tolerance.

We have also set up a facility at the Indian Institute of Wheat and Barley Research at Karnal to screen our germplasm lines for heat tolerance.

How long will it take to get a variety for commercial use?

We should be able to provide a variety in five years.

Another major area of concern is pulses. We have been importing pulses at great cost to the exchequer. What are the strategies to address this?

We have been importing 4-5 million tonnes a year, spending about ₹10,000-12,000 crore. It’s certainly a huge burden. Pulses, traditionally, are grown in rain-fed areas for centuries. We get very poor yields there. It’s a constraint and we understand it well. This needs to be addressed in order to reduce dependency on imports.

We need to have shorter duration varieties so that they fit into our cropping pattern. Crops such as moong bean (green gram) fit well here. In several areas in the Indo-Gangetic plain and the North-East, people don’t grow anything after rice or wheat. For one, the rice-wheat acreage in the Indo-Gangetic plain is 10 million hectares. Even if we get yields of 0.5 tonnes a hectare, we will get 4-5 million tonnes there.

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