Agricultural and food biotechnology

Prelims and MainsAdded 20 September

A genetically modified (GM) crop carries a gene from another organism. In two decades India has approved one for commercial growing: Bt cotton, in 2002, carrying a Bacillus thuringiensis gene toxic to the bollworm, now on nearly all of India's cotton area. Everything else has stalled. Bt brinjal was cleared by the regulator in 2009 and put under an indefinite moratorium by the minister in 2010. GM mustard, DMH 11, a hybrid made possible by a gene system that lets two lines cross, was approved for environmental release in 2022 and stopped by the Supreme Court, whose split verdict in 2024 sent the government back to write a national policy. Herbicide tolerant Bt cotton is grown illegally on a large scale with no approval at all. The regulator is the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) in the Environment Ministry, under rules made in 1989 under the Environment (Protection) Act.

• The ladder of committees: Institutional Biosafety Committees at each lab, the Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation under the Department of Biotechnology for research and trials, and the GEAC for large scale trials and environmental release; State governments must also give no objection for field trials, which is where most trials stop.
• The arguments: for, yield and lower pesticide use (Bt cotton cut insecticide sprays for a decade); against, resistance in pests (pink bollworm now resists Bt cotton), seed cost and control by a few firms, gene flow to wild relatives, and, for mustard, effects on honeybees and herbicide use.
• Genome edited crops without foreign DNA (SDN 1 and SDN 2) were taken out of this process in 2022, and two edited rice varieties were released in 2025; that route, not genetic modification, is where Indian crop biotechnology is now moving.
• International: the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (2000, under the Convention on Biological Diversity, India a Party since 2003) governs movement of living modified organisms across borders; India labels imported genetically modified food and permits GM soybean oil imports.
• Mains asks the same question every few years: what biotechnology can do for farmers. The honest answer is Bt cotton's record, the edited rice, and the regulatory freeze in between.

Mains: India's GM debate has been decided by process rather than evidence: the science cleared two crops the politics did not, and the 2022 exemption for gene edited crops is the State's way of changing the subject rather than settling it.

Further reading: The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (CBD) · GEAC Approvals (MoEFCC)

See also: Pigeonpea telomere-to-telomere genome · Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana · Recirculatory aquaculture and biofloc · Gene editing: CRISPR, base editing and prime editing

Prelims

Fish waste turns to ammonia, and ammonia is what limits how many fish a tank can hold. Take it out of the water and the same water will carry a far heavier stock.

• The biofilter of a Recirculatory Aquaculture System (RAS) converts the ammonia in fish waste first into nitrite and then into nitrate.
• That is what lets the system reuse 90 to 95 per cent of its water and stock its tanks intensively all year.

Prelims

Both systems are built with money from the same scheme.

• The Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY), launched in 2020 on the base of the earlier Blue Revolution scheme, supports both recirculating and biofloc units.
• India is second in world fish production, at about 8 per cent of global output, and first in shrimp production and exports.