Biotechnology for Sustainable Crop Production and Protection: Challenges and Opportunities

In 2009, transgenic crops were grown on 134 million hectares in 25 countries, including India, in six continents by about 14million farmers, marking an 80-fold increase in the area since their first commercialization on 1.7 m ha in the USA and fiveother countries in 1996. The dominant transgenic traits were herbicide tolerance and insect resistance, deployed either alone orboth stacked in the same plant. A recent survey of the global impact of biotech crops estimated that in 2008 alone, the totalcrop production gain globally for the 4 principal biotech crops - maize, soybean, cotton and canola - was 29.6 million metrictons while the net economic benefit to the biotech farmers was US$ 9.2 billion. The cumulative benefits for the period 1996-2008 were yield gains of 167 million tons and economic returns of US$ 51.9 billion. In India, the area planted with Bt-cottonincreased significantly from year to year since its introduction in 2002 and reached 8.4 million hectares in 2009. The overallbenefits from Bt-cotton included an yield increase of up to 63% due to effective control of bollworms, pesticide reduction by50%, net profit to farmers up to Rs.10,000/hectare and turned India from an importer to a major exporter of cotton. Theseindicate that biotechnology has made significant contributions to higher productivity, lower costs of production and increasedeconomic benefits and that it has enormous potential for the future with new traits, events and crops. Over 60 countries,including India, are engaged in research on about 55 crop species to incorporate transgenes to bestow various traits such asresistance to pests, diseases or herbicides; tolerance to environmental stresses like drought, cold or salinity; enhanced cropyields, nutrition or shelf-life, etc. However, unreasonable opposition to biotechnology and undue delays in regulatoryapprovals are some of the major challenges that need to be addressed so as to make full use of this technology which has thepotential to revolutionize agriculture