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Round-up Ready (HtBt) cotton — regulatory status in India

Herbicide-tolerant Bt cotton — also marketed as Bollgard-II Roundup Ready Flex or HtBt — stacks a glyphosate-tolerance trait with the Cry1Ac+Cry2Ab Bt traits, allowing over-the-top glyphosate sprays for weed control. Despite being widely cultivated outside India, the event has not been approved for commercial cultivation in India.

Overview

The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) has approved only the Bollgard-I (BG-I) and Bollgard-II (BG-II) events for commercial cultivation in India (see Bt Cotton Bg Ii). No herbicide-tolerant cotton event has been cleared. HtBt seed nevertheless circulates through unauthorised supply chains, particularly in Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. Investigative reporting has estimated unauthorised HtBt seed sales of up to 7.5 million packets in a single season.

Driver of illegal spread

The principal driver is the high cost and scarcity of manual labour for weeding under Indian smallholder cotton systems (see Cotton Picking Labour for the parallel picking-labour squeeze). A glyphosate-tolerant crop allows a single broadcast spray of glyphosate in place of pre-emergence plus directed post-emergence applications and manual weeding (Cotton Weed Management); on Bt cotton without the tolerance trait, off-label glyphosate use frequently causes phytotoxicity that needs to be managed through recovery sprays (Cotton Herbicide Recovery).

Regulatory and policy debate

The seed trade and farmer associations have repeatedly petitioned GEAC either to approve HtBt cotton — citing its widespread de facto adoption — or to enforce the ban more strictly. Civil-society organisations have raised concerns about agronomic stewardship (off-target damage, glyphosate residues, weed resistance) and about the precedent for other unapproved GM events.

Implementation

In practice, the supply chain runs through unauthorised seed producers and grey-market dealers; seed packets are sometimes sold without branding or with deliberately misleading labels. Enforcement has been inconsistent across states.

See also Bt Cotton Bg Ii, Cotton Weed Management, Cotton Herbicide Recovery, Cotton Picking Labour.

References

  1. India fails to weed out illegal herbicide-tolerant cotton. SciDev/Phys.org.
  2. Herbicide Tolerant (HT) Bt Cotton. Drishti IAS.
  3. Illegal GM cotton spreads across India. Down to Earth.