Ithaca, New York
September 19, 2007
Cornell University researchers and Sathguru Management
Consultants of India have successfully led an international
consortium through the first phase of developing a
pest-resistant eggplant. By about 2009 this eggplant is expected
to be the first genetically engineered food crop in South Asia.
Farmers have grown genetically altered cotton in India since
2002.
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A farmer (with
yellow headdress) and researchers harvest Bt
eggplant from a field trial at the
University of Agricultural Sciences in
Dharward, India.
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The engineered eggplant expresses
a natural insecticide derived from the bacteria Bacillus
thuringiensis (Bt), making it resistant to the fruit and shoot
borer (FSB), a highly destructive pest. The tiny larvae account
for up to 40 percent of eggplant crop losses each year in India,
Bangladesh and the Philippines, and other areas of South and
Southeast Asia.
The work on the resistant eggplant is part of the Agricultural
Biotechnology Support Project (ABSP) II, which is funded by the
U.S. Agency for International Development and administered by
Cornell in partnership with Sathguru, a firm associated with
Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS).
Cornell researchers from plant breeding, entomology, molecular
biology, applied economics, communication, international
programs and the Cornell Center for Technology Enterprise and
Commercialization began collaborating on the development of the
Bt eggplant in 2002. Another partner,
Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds, is
on schedule to commercialize the genetically modified fruit by
2009.
"Cornell has worked effectively to facilitate a productive
partnership between the public and private sectors that will
make this technology available to eggplant producers at every
economic level," said Ronnie Coffman, international professor of
plant breeding and genetics and director of International
Programs in CALS.
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Fruit and
shoot borers (FSB) infest an eggplant.
FSB-resistant eggplants are expected to
double farmers yields.
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"In five years, with support from
Sathguru and Cornell, our partners were able to bring this
flagship program to field trials and get food, feed and
environmental safety approvals," said K.V. Raman, Cornell
professor of plant breeding.
All the safety tests for the Bt eggplant have been conducted in
India, starting in greenhouses and now moving to large-scale
field trials. The eggplant has been found to be nontoxic to
fish, chickens, rabbits, goats, rats and cattle as well as
nonallergenic. Ongoing tests will examine such questions as
whether the plant will continue to resist FSB in the field and
for how long; whether the Bt eggplant cross pollinates with
other eggplants in the field and how far the Bt plants should be
from other eggplant fields; whether nontarget insect populations
are affected in the long term; and how yields compare with those
of other eggplant varieties.
It is estimated that the Bt eggplant will reduce insecticide use
by 30 percent while doubling the yield of marketable fruit
(although eggplant is eaten as a vegetable).
Eggplant is a popular crop in the subtropics and tropics,
especially in India and Bangladesh, where it is grown on about
1.5 million acres.
India and Bangladesh together expect to plant 110,000 acres of
the FSB-resistant eggplant commercially by the end of 2010 and
650,000 acres by 2015. Economists from Cornell and other
institutions report that the Bt eggplant would result in lower
prices for consumers, higher yields for farmers and, by 2015,
boost the Indian economy by $411 million and the Bangladeshi
economy by $37 million.
"In spite of the green revolution in India, agricultural growth
has stagnated there to less than 2 percent per year," said
Raman. "It is important for a land-grant university like Cornell
to be engaged in the improvement of technologies and help create
a road map that leads to agricultural and economic growth in
places like South and Southeast Asia and Africa."
By Krishna Ramanujan |
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