India faces GM cotton delay | Nature Biotechnology


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Access through your institution Buy or subscribe India's first biotechnology-related court case could delay introduction of Monsanto's (St. Louis, MO) genetically modified (GM)


Bollgard cotton by a year. The Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, a nongovernmental organization in Delhi, has filed a petition alleging that trials being conducted by


Maharashtra Hybrid Company (MAHYCO; Mumbai, India) are harmful to the environment and were illegally authorized by the Indian government's Department of Biotechnology. It also claims


that MAHYCO, of which Monsanto owns 26%, compromised biosafety guidelines by asking farmers to plant seeds before obtaining formal permission. As a result, the Department of Biotechnology


has until the end of April to reply to a supreme court notice instructing them to justify the permission they gave for the field trials; MAHYCO denies all charges. Furthermore, in February,


the government Review Committee for Genetic Manipulation questioned the validity of test trial data, which claimed that the GM cotton yield was 40% higher than control crop and that no


pesticide was required. Before permitting large-scale field trials, the review committee asked for the trials to be repeated in 10 more locations, under independent monitoring, to clarify


the amount of pesticide used and the extent of bollworm attack. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution ACCESS OPTIONS Access through your institution


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Contact customer support AUTHOR INFORMATION AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * KS Jayaraman Authors * KS Jayaraman View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google


Scholar RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Jayaraman, K. India faces GM cotton delay. _Nat Biotechnol_ 17, 315 (1999).


https://doi.org/10.1038/7833 Download citation * Issue Date: 01 April 1999 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/7833 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you share the following link with will be able to


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