Centre Urged To Check Spread Of BG-III Cotton

Natural Fibers

Centre Urged To Check Spread Of BG-III Cotton

Telangana government has requested the Centre to formulate protocols and guidelines at the earliest to take steps to check the spread of herbicide tolerant variety cotton seed, popularly known as BG-III, which is not cleared by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), and is harming the biodiversity in the country.

A detailed presentation was made on the unauthorised spread of the unapproved cotton variety by Director of Telangana State Seed & Organic Certification Authority K. Keshavulu before the visiting team of Field-level Inspection and Scientific Evaluation Committee (FISEC) appointed by the Centre on the issue of BG-III. He also explained the initiatives taken by the state government in bringing the issue to the Centre's notice constantly. The high-level team comprising officials from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR), Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) and Prof.

Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University visited Jogulamba - Gadwal, Vikarabad and Mancherial districts before meeting the stakeholders, including seed growers, dealers, national and state seed associations at a meeting here.

Leader of the visiting team, chief scientific officer in DBT, V.S. Reddy, complimented the efforts of Telangana government in highlighting the issue at national-level. The team arrived in Telangana after studying the issue in Gujarat.

Agriculture Production Commissioner C. Parthasarathi said all the stakeholders are in total confusion on the issue of BG-III in the absence of any guidelines from the Centre since the seed was unapproved.

Cotton farmers stage protest

Meanwhile, cotton farmers staged a demonstration deploring the raids by agriculture officials and seizure of BT-III cotton seeds and stoppage of seed processing, before the Kurnool Collectorate here last week.

A.P. Rythu Sangham district secretary T. Ramesh Kumar and president A. Rajasekhar, who led the protest, said it had been four days since cotton companies closed their processing units fearing the raids.

The companies directed the farmers not to bring their cotton produce for processing. Farmers had no option but to keep their unprocessed cotton produce at home, after spending Rs 2 lakh per acre to cultivate the crop, they said. They submitted a memorandum to District Collector S. Satyanarayana to hold discussions with the seed and processing companies & mitigate the farmers' plight.