Agro Scientists red-flag premature announcement of release of Genome Edited Rice lines by ICAR at the hand of Union Minister

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New Delhi: Agricultural Scientists from across the country have in a letter addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi have raised concerns over the premature announcement of release of Genome Edited Rice lines by Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) at the hand of Union Agriculture Minister recently.

“We appreciate the efforts of the scientists involved in developing new Genome Edited (GEd) rice lines using new technology, which should benefit our farmers. The hard work of our scientists should not go waste and India should not loose through exorbitant Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) fees during negotiations, due to the haste in release of these lines at the hands of Union Agriculture Minister, on May 4 earlier this year”, state the Agricultural Scientists in a statement released here recently.

The Agricultural Scientists have made the following submission to the Prime Minister –

1. The CRISPR-Cas9 technology used in developing these GEd rice lines, is not our indigenous one and will have to procure license from the foreign Intellectual Property Right (IPR) holder Multinational companies (MNCs) for commercial cultivation of the GEd lines. In the light of following risks, we doubt if the nation loses the real advantage expected from such Genome Edited varieties.

2. At present we find the following limitations of CRISPR-Cas9 Genome Editing Technology for India. 

     a) Although the technology is considered very precise, there can be random “off target mutations” to give undesirable changes by Cas9 if the product is not in final shape.

     b) The large spread of the GEd rice can cause genetic contamination in our cultivated germplasm, as well as in rice production. It will affect export of Organic rice which is worth approximately 1.2 billion USD.

3. Intellectual Property Rights of CRISPR technology lies with foreign universities/MNCs. It can make our farmers dependent for seed on their mercy, as experienced in case of Bt cotton after its release in the year 2002. The aggressive marketing campaign by the MNCs and seed traders to expand the sale of Bt hybrids, indigenous non Bt cotton hybrids and competitive varieties went out of cultivation to >95%. Further research on non-GM cotton has also been hampered for the last few decades. Further the expected economy envisaged in the budget on chemical pest control, particularly the boll worms failed. Bt cotton grown on large areas caused the evolutionary process to develop resistant biotypes in the pest, and epidemic attack of Spodoptera and sucking pests after a decade or so. There had been more suicides among cotton grower farmers due to uneconomical hybrid cotton cultivation. Many suffered due to unregulated spurious Bt seeds. We must have a lesson from this, in the use of imported technology on mass scale by Indian farmers in the long run.

4. An inadequate evaluation of GEd rice lines is a more serious concern for publicly highlighting the GEd as promising lines which may or may not prove superior in further tests under Central Variety Release Committee (CVRC) protocol. DG, ICAR in his interview with press appeared in “Business Standard” on May 19, indicated that the GEd lines will follow the CVRC protocol and it will take about 5 more years to release these lines.

5. It can be taken as a precedence of the premature release of new seed through such function at the hand of influential political personalities and its wide media publicity as seen in present case which is a clear bypass of legal protocol observed by CVRC, under the Ministry of Agriculture. 

As Agricultural Scientists, we fear that the wide publicity through a function of release on May 4, will definitely not go in favour of the Indian side, in one-time negotiations with the owners of IPR for the GEd technology, for commercial cultivation of the GEd rice by Indian farmers. 

Under such situations it is a matter of great concern to our farm sector. It is therefore submitted that the hurry and haste in release of GEd rice, without full confirmation of the required data about the superiority over existing best recommended varieties under the specific stress conditions (Salinity, drought, and other biotic factors) adversely affecting the productivity, is unethical, illegal and undesirable and to be viewed very seriously in the interest of the nation. Sir, we therefore urge for kind intervention in safeguarding the interests of Indian farmers and farming at large.