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Agricultural and food biotechnology

Start here sets out which genetically modified crops India has approved, who approves them and where the rest stopped. The theme then follows genome edited crops, crop and animal genomes, breeding technologies, fish farming systems and food grown from cells. Prelims has asked how genome sequencing can be used in Indian agriculture and about biofilters in recirculating aquaculture.

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GM crops in India: what is approved, who approves

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.

GM crops in India and where each stopped

Crop	Trait	Regulator's decision	Status
Bt cotton	insect resistance (Cry genes)	GEAC approval 2002; further events 2006	the only commercial GM crop; over 90 per cent of cotton area
Bt brinjal	insect resistance	GEAC approval 2009	ministerial moratorium since 2010; Bangladesh grows it
GM mustard (DMH 11)	hybrid seed system (barnase, barstar, bar genes) with herbicide tolerance	GEAC environmental release 2022	halted by the Supreme Court; split verdict 2024; policy directed
Herbicide tolerant Bt cotton	herbicide tolerance plus Bt	never approved	grown illegally on a large scale
Genome edited rice (DRR Dhan 100 Kamala, Pusa DST Rice 1)	yield and stress tolerance, no foreign DNA	exempt from GM rules 2022	released 2025

One approval in twenty years; the edited rice shows the route that now works.Source: GEAC; Rules, 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.

UPSC has asked

Prelims 2021: what Bollgard I and Bollgard II are
Prelims 2018: what the genes in GM mustard do
Prelims 2015: the Act under which the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee is constituted

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

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