India Promotes GMOs in Asia

 K.S. Jayaraman, Nature Biotechnology, July 2002 Vol 20,No 7 pp 641-642 (Reproduced in AgBioView with Approval from the editor of NB)

Having allowed commercial-scale planting of genetically modified cotton and announced plans to introduce half a dozen genetically modified (GM) crop plants in the next two years (Nat. Biotechnol. 20, 415, 2002), India has started to champion the adoption of GM technology among other Asian countries. In late May, the Indian government, with support from the regional office of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (a United Nations-recognized intergovernmental body), brought 18 Asian countries to a conference in New Delhi, where the countries formed an alliance to deal with all issues surrounding the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the region. Indian science minister Bachi Singh Rawat, who opened the conference, noted that India "would like to see the development of regional programs that strengthen this part of the world significantly in the handling of GMOs." Rawat said many countries in the region do not have access to GMOs in their public sector outfits and hence "are not feeling encouraged to apply this technology with confidence." Because of this, "there is a strong need to upgrade capabilities of individual countries to not only develop their own technologies but also to create competence for the assessment of risks and benefits on sound scientific basis." Prasanta Kumar Ghosh, chief adviser to DBT, the Indian Department of Biotechnology (New Delhi), and a key member in the organizing committee, agrees. "The basic point that emerged from the conference was that developing countries would embrace GMOs if they had a mechanism in their countries to ensure [that GMO] introduction is safe to their people and the environment," says Ghosh. Bhutan and Mauritius, for instance, although concerned about adverse impact of GMOs on wild germplasm, have no regulatory bodies to oversee this or advise their government on the issues involved. In this respect, says Ghosh, such countries "very much welcome regional collaboration" to build capacity and avoid repetitive research and environmental mishaps. Regional collaborations are preferred, he says, because of similarities in culture and agricultural crops and practices. China, the region's leader in biotech applications, felt it "necessary to set up appropriate regional cooperation mechanisms" considering that a number of Asian countries, such as India, the Philippines, and Thailand, "have taken biotechnology as a mainstay industry in twenty-first century," according to Wang Changyong of China's Environmental Protection Administration (Beijing). He pointed out that other Asian countries have imported GMOs from developed countries "to solve their food shortage" and need to ensure that GMOs that have already been "released into [the] open environment for field trial and commercial production" do not harm the environment. China proposed a possible regional cooperation model to evolve a uniform framework for risk assessment and management of GMOs as well as the development of databases for the environmental release and commercial production of GMOs. China also suggested collaborative scientific research between countries, with the establishment of a joint biosafety laboratory and exchange of scholars. Although all countries at the conference favored such efforts, some voiced concerns. For instance, representatives from Nepal and Mauritius made it clear that their countries would adopt GMOs only if their introduction was environmentally safe. A delegate from Nepal said that Nepal is "cautious" but not averse to GMOs, and that "the GMO research must be totally transparent." Even Thailand, which is expected to be the next country to introduce GMOs (under less stringent laws than India), does not favor blanket introduction of GMOs, calling for a cautious case-by-case approach by each nation. Others, such as Bhutan and Vietnam, are worried that the introduction of GM crops could eliminate some of the need for agricultural labor. Having formed the alliance, the participating countries will now help each other build scientific capacity to assess environmental and food safety of GMOs and set up a sound administrative structure and legal framework for handling GMOs in each country. India, China, and Thailand-acknowledged biotech leaders in the region-will take a lead role in providing training and other facilities to strengthen the infrastructure of fellow developing countries for handling GMOs. This building up of capacity is expected to be very thorough and will include setting protocols for large field studies of GM plants, animals, and microorganisms; devising experiments to study the effects of GMOs on flora and fauna; developing animal models to assess the safety of food containing GMOs; producing transgenic microorganisms such as Escherichia coli; setting up insect-rearing facilities and bioassays; agreeing on analytical methods to trace transgenic traits in the open; and establishing PCR methods for detecting and quantitatively assessing nucleic acids, says Ghosh. Because most Asian countries are likely to import GMOs, he says, they need to be able to examine the rationality of transgenic constructs introduced, including promoter and terminator sequences, genes, enhancers, and markers. Each country will also have a biosafety clearinghouse as a focal point and will be able to access and submit information to center for GMOs for the entire Asia region. "Developing countries still experimenting with the process of evaluation of GMOs are handicapped by lack of adequately trained scientific manpower to quantify the risk perception, [the] severity of which varies with time and region," observes E.A. Siddiq, a leading Indian rice geneticist in Hyderabad, India and a conference participant. "The New Delhi meeting," he says, "may be a starting point for many such collaborations."