The long road to commercialization of Bt brinjal (eggplant) in India

On 14 October 2009, the Genetic Engineering ApprovalCommittee (GEAC) of India approved the commercialization oftransgenic Bt brinjal (¼eggplant), transformed to express aninsecticidal protein (Cry1Ac) from the bacterium, Bacillus thur-ingiensis. This was a signiﬁcant decision on the long road tobecoming the ﬁrst genetically engineered food crop in India.According to the Ministry of the Environment and Forests of theIndian Government, GEAC is the apex body constituted in theMinistry of Environment and Forests under 'Rules for Manufacture,Use, Import, Export and Storage of Hazardous Microorganisms/Genetically Engineered Organisms or Cells 1989', under the Envi-ronment Protection Act, 1986 (http://moef.nic.in/modules/project-clearances/geac-clearance). Thus, the Minister of Environmentand Forests, Mr. Jairam Ramesh, considers his agency as the ﬁnalgatekeeper of genetically engineered crops in India. According toMr. Vijayaraghavan, the South Asia Regional Coordinator of the Btbrinjal project, soon after GEAC's announcement, members ofGreenpeace and other anti-biotechnology NGOs sent thousands offaxes and emails to Mr. Ramesh's ofﬁce urging him to ban thecultivation of Bt brinjal. Thus, Bt brinjal continues to be caught ina political hurricane in India. Its ﬁnal fate may be decided by thetime this article appears in print, but what that will be is notpresently known. I offer my perspective on this issue for yourconsideration. Much of the background on brinjal and its pestcomplex is summarized in a recent publication by Choudhary andGaur (2009). However, this is only part of the story in thiscomplex situation.Brinjal, Solanum melongena (Family: Solanaceae), is a widelycultivated vegetable in India. Brinjal, along with tomato and onion,is the second most important vegetable in India and is consideredthe most affordable, so is consumed in a wide variety of dishespopular throughout India. Brinjal is highly nutritious and isbelieved to have certain medicinal properties and is culturallyimportant to the Indian people who annually consume between 8and 9 million metric tonnes which is grown on >500,000 ha. Aswith most solanaceous vegetables, brinjal has a diverse pestcomplex of insects and diseases, but the most serious is the fruitandshootborer(FSB),Leucinodesorbonalis(Family:Pyralidae).Asistypical with this insect family, preventing injury relies on thedifﬁculttaskofusingwell-timedinsecticideapplicationsbeforetheeggs hatchintolarvaethat bore intothe stems or fruits of theplant.In India FSB causes yield losses of 60e70% even after repeatedinsecticidal sprays, resulting not only in signiﬁcant crop losses buthazards to human health and the environment (Choudhary andGaur, 2009).For decades, scientists at the Asian Vegetable Research andDevelopment Center (AVRDC) in Taiwan have worked to developan integrated pest management (IPM) approach to control FSB.Talekar (2002) published a bulletin describing what he calleda “Simple, Safe and Economical Approach” to controlling FSB. Itrelied on removing infested shoots and fruit, pheromone trappingto prevent mating, and judicious use of insecticides to protectnatural enemies. To be most effective, he suggested that thesepractices be used on a community level since FSB can readily ﬂybetween ﬁelds. Although this integrated approach soundsreasonable, removing infested stems and fruits would lower yieldsand is labour-intensive. Additionally, pheromone disruption isoften costly and does not provide the level of control needed.Thus, growers in India continue to rely on insecticides as theirmain method of control, spraying upwards of 40 times per seasonfor control of FSB.Insect-resistantplants(hostplantresistance,HPR)shouldbethefoundation of an IPM program (Naranjo et al., 2008); however, nohighlevelsofresistancehavebeenbredintocommerciallyavailablebrinjal varieties using traditional methods. If it had been, growerswould surely have adopted them since they prefer to reduce labor