Ithaca, New York
February 11, 2009
Source: Cornell University
Chronicle
Cornell helps India's small
farmers fight moth larvae with genetically modified eggplant
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Feb09/IndiaEggplant.kr.html
By Krishna Ramanujan
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Revadhi farms seven acres
of land outside of Coimbatore and sells her produce
at a farmers' market in the city.
Photo: Krishna Ramanujan/Cornell Chronicle |
Cornell Chronicle writer Krishna
Ramanujan traveled to India last month as part of the College of
Agriculture and Life Sciences field course International
Agriculture and Rural Development 602, which seeks to acquaint
students with major issues and problems in international
agriculture and rural development. This is the second of five
articles from that trip.
At a farmer's market in the southern Indian city of Coimbatore,
a farmer named Govindaraju sat before a pile of eggplants
riddled with small holes. He said the natural insecticide he
used, made from cow dung and urine, offered only limited
protection against fruit and shoot borers that infest his crop.
Nearby, another farmer, Revadhi, had few of the tell-tale brown
holes in her small eggplants, but she had sprayed them with
harmful chemical pesticides twice a week.
Small farmers in India will soon have a cheaper, safer and more
effective option for growing one of India's favorite foods:
genetically modified eggplant, developed with Cornell's help,
which continually expresses a naturally occurring insecticide
derived from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt).
"The Bt eggplant will be the first genetically modified food
crop to be released in the whole of South Asia," said K.V.
Raman, Cornell professor of plant breeding. "The impacts could
be really dramatic."
The life cycle of the fruit and shoot borer Leucinodes orbonalis
provides only a two- to three-hour window for farmers to spray
and kill the insect's larvae after hatching and before the
larvae bore into the eggplant. With such fleeting opportunities,
farmers spray every few days, as much as 50 times per crop,
driving up costs, contaminating produce and creating health
issues for farmers.
Based on field trials, the yield of the Bt eggplant is expected
to be twice that of other varieties and will need 30 percent
less pesticide; some insecticides will still be necessary for
other pests.
Since 2002 the Cornell-run Agricultural Biotechnology Support
Project (ABSP) II and Sathguru Management Consultants, Cornell's
partner in India, have worked with Indian public and private
institutions to develop the eggplant. ABSPII is funded by the
U.S. Agency for International Development, which is interested
in promoting agricultural biotechnology in developing countries.
Cornell and Sathguru convinced Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Co.
(MAHYCO), a seed company that is one-quarter owned by the
agricultural giant Monsanto, to donate parent plants of the Bt
eggplant to Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) in
Coimbatore, the University of Agricultural Sciences in Dharwad
and the Indian Institute of Vegetable Research in Varanasi, to
breed genetically modified local varieties. Parent plants were
also similarly donated to institutions in the Philippines and
Bangladesh.
MAHYCO conducted such tests as the field safety tests on the
plants' growth, Bt spread, effects of Bt on human health,
allergenicity and effects on such beneficial insects as
honeybees; they submitted their findings to the Indian
government last year.
Then, TNAU researchers crossed popular local varieties of
eggplant with the parent Bt plants from MAHYCO. They then
"back-crossed" the offspring -- taking the most resistant and
productive progeny of those crosses and crossing them again with
local varieties. After three such "back-crosses," they created
plants that have the Bt gene and contain 99 percent of the local
varieties' genetic material.
Advanced lines of the local Bt eggplants are now ready in
greenhouses at TNAU awaiting final federal approval. Once that
happens, which could be anytime, the public sector will sell
seeds at cost-recovery prices (i.e., at no profit) to small
famers for open-pollinated local varieties, whose seeds can be
saved and planted year after year, making the new technology
accessible to poor farmers. Concurrently, MAHYCO will sell to
larger farms hybrid Bt eggplant seeds that have higher yields
but must be purchased each year.
"It was obvious that Bt eggplant eventually was going to be
available as a hybrid, so we wanted to create open-pollinated
varieties aimed toward benefiting low-income farmers," said
Ronnie Coffman, international professor of plant breeding and
director of International Programs in Cornell's College of
Agriculture and Life Sciences.
"A substantial portion of the farmer's income goes to protect
against this borer," added P. Balasubramaniam, director of the
Centre for Plant Molecular Biology at TNAU. "I hope farmers will
welcome this product with an open mind."
Once the government gives its approval, Indian university
researchers and others expect that up to six months will be
needed to produce, bag and label the seeds. They are training 40
extension professionals to offer informational workshops and
outreach to vegetable farmers. A database will track seeds from
production to farmers, so public suppliers can account for every
seed. There are also plans to use post offices as central seed
distribution points, and local cooperative groups, mostly
composed of women who are well-connected to their farming
communities, to help facilitate getting seeds in farmers' hands. |
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