Experts concerned over Centre’s push for GM rice, cites ‘irreversible damage’
Experts and agricultural activists have raised concerns over the introduction of genetically modified rice varieties in India, citing potential risks to biodiversity, seed sovereignty, biosafety and rice exports. The Coalition for a GM-Free India has urged comprehensive testing and transparent scientific evaluation before distributing gene-edited rice varieties to farmers.
Bengaluru: Researchers, experts and agricultural activists have warned that the Union government is set to cause irreversible damage to India’s rice (paddy)-growing farmers by introducing genetically modified (GM) rice.
Recent media reports say that ‘Pusa DST Rice 1’, a GM variety announced last year, was at the stage of seed multiplication to distribute it to farmers for the winter (rabi) sowing season.
In a letter to Union Agriculture Minister Shivaraj Singh Chauhan, Coalition for a GM-Free India, a national platform of public-spirited citizens, expressed concerns under eight different heads – from the imprecise nature of gene editing technology to negative impact on seed sovereignty, the larger environmental risks and threats posed to traditional rice varieties.
The Coalition said gene editing tools “invariably” produce unintended DNA damage.
“The agricultural biotech industry claims that gene-editing tools like CRISPR-Cas change the genome in a precise way, resulting in only intended changes. This claim is refuted by an ever-growing amount of scientific evidence proving its imprecision,” it said, citing scientific papers.
The deregulation of the two gene editing techniques, the coalition noted, has removed the mandatory biosafety testing. As a result, the Pusa DST Rice 1 along with the ‘Kamala’ variety have been launched without biosafety testing. Gene editing, it said, is a subset of genetic modification, not a distinct category.
The letter by Kavita Kuruganti of the Coalition was endorsed by 97 persons, including researchers, experts in plant breeding, retired scientists and others.
It questioned the scientific integrity of the data regarding the two rice varieties released by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and called it a scientific fraud.
Besides threatening India’s seed sovereignty, the letter said, the GM rice threatens India’s rice export.
It noted that India, the largest rice producer in the world, may lose key markets in West Asia and the Gulf region that are pro-organic.
“If gene-edited rice varieties are indeed as beneficial as they are claimed to be, they must undergo thorough testing with the data being publicly available for wider scientific scrutiny,” it added
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Source : Deccan Herald
