Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), India’s biotech regulator, has requested the authority of Bangladesh to provide detailed information about Bt brinjal, according to a Livemint report.
Bt brinjal is a genetically modified crop and Bangladesh farmers have been growing it since 2013.
The India request came in the wake of an application by the seed company Mahyco seeking approval for commercial release of Bt brinjal in India, added the Livemint report. Livemint is the name of the online portal of Mint, India’s one of the premium business news outlets.
In a meeting of GEAC last month, it was mentioned that Bangladesh had approved the “same Mahyco’s Bt Brinjal technology in 2013” and 50,000 farmers in the country are growing the vegetable this year.
The GEAC noted that the Indian government had put a moratorium on the commercial release of Bt Brinjal in 2010 and asked the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) to “obtain relevant information and data on the post commercial release effects of Bt brinjal... from Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute”.
The committee directed ICAR to undertake such studies in Bangladesh, to this end, and asked Mahyco to furnish independent scientific studies on the Bangladesh experience.