DowDuPont recently withdrew its application for carrying out biosafety trials of transgenic maize variety because it failed to get permission from many States, said KV Subbarao, South Asia leader of Corteva Agriscience, DowDupont’s agri division, on Wednesday.

Subbarao said the US multinational has carried out field trials of the genetically modified maize for three years. The GM maize is resistant to stem borer, which is a serious problem in maize crop. To get the approval, it has to complete four years of on-farm trials. The fourth year’s trial has to be carried out on “broad number of geographies as India has got diverse climatic conditions”, he said.

“But we had approvals only from selective one or two States,” the Corteva official told reporters on the sidelines of an agricultural summit here.

In the last meeting of the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) in September, the company informed the biotech regulator that it was “deferring the fourth year trials (2nd year biosafety research level-1 confined field trials)” from Karnataka and Punjab.

“We have advanced significantly. We have been conducting trials for the last five-six years. As and when the regulatory system is ready, we have to conduct just one year of trial,” Subbarao said.

DowDuPont was not the first multinational seed company to withdraw from GM seed trails. In 2017, Monsanto withdrew its Roundup Ready cotton and rice. Even though, Subbarao argued, the company wants India to have a strong intellectual property regime, that was not the reason to defer the trails.

Ram Kaundinya, Director General of Federation of Seed Industry in India, said the lack of policy for regulatory and intellectual property matters has been putting pressure on firms to go slow on developmental projects.

“The firms are worried that the government may force them to give compulsory licences to other seed firms. This is particularly after the Delhi High Court ruling in the case of Mahyco Monsanto and the Competition Commission of India.”

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