Union Agriculture Minister Launches Genome-Edited Rice Varieties
Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan recently announced that India has become the first country in the world to develop rice varieties using genome editing technology. The new seeds will be available for farmers after the required clearances within six months, and large-scale seed production is expected to begin during the next three crop seasons.
A team of researchers from various institutions, guided by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), developed two new varieties: DRR Dhan 100 (also known as Kamala) and Pusa DST Rice 1. Kamala, developed from the popular high-yielding green rice Samba Mahsuri, shows superior yield, drought tolerance, and nitrogen use efficiency compared to its parent variety. It has an average yield of 5.37 tonnes per hectare, compared to 4.5 tonnes per hectare of Samba Mahsuri across two years and 25 locations of testing in the country. The earliness trait of Kamala will help in saving water, fertilizers, and reducing methane emissions.
Pusa DST Rice 1, developed from the Maruteru 1010 (MTU1010) variety, has a yield of 3,508 kilograms per hectare, a capacity of 9.66% more than MTU 1010 under inland salinity stress. It also showed a superiority of 14.66% over MTU 1010 under alkalinity conditions and a 30.4% yield advantage under coastal salinity stress.
The technology used to develop these seeds is Site-Directed Nuclease 1 and Site-Directed Nuclease 2 (SDN-1 and SDN-2) genome editing techniques. Though this technique was used to develop different crops since 2001, making a rice variety has been done for the first time. The first peer-reviewed research paper on Pusa DST Rice 1 was published in 2020 and has since been cited in more than 300 papers.
Dr. Viswanathan, Joint Director (Research) at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, said that since the genome editing technology SDN-3 is not involved in this process, they are not genetically modified (GM) crops. The mutant was developed without any foreign gene and mutation occurred through a natural process. This is a precision mutation technique, and several countries have exempted this process from the regulations required for developing GM crops.
However, Venugopal Badaravada, a farmers’ representative in the ICAR governing body, said that the ICAR’s genome-edited rice claims are premature and misleading. He demanded accountability, transparent data, and technologies tested in their fields, not just polished press releases. The Coalition for a Genetically Modified-Free India, a group of activists fighting against GM crops in the Supreme Court, claimed that the biotech industry and lobbies have falsely portrayed gene editing as a precise and safe technology. They also claimed that India’s de-regulation of two kinds of gene editing is illegal and that the Government of India is compromising on farmers’ seed sovereignty and food sovereignty by bringing in technologies entangled in IPR issues.
The new rice varieties are expected to help address the challenges posed by increasing food demand, climate change, and biotic and abiotic stresses such as pest attacks and scarcity of water.
