(© PUNIT PARANJPE) 

Eggplant Surprise

When an insect-resistant eggplant was developed in India, many agricultural scientists expected it to gain prompt official approval. A staple of the Indian diet, eggplant (Solanum melongena)—widely known as brinjal in India and as aubergine in other parts of the world—is well suited to small-scale, labor-intensive cultivation. India is the world’s second largest producer, after China.  Supplies are adequate, but yields suffer from extensive insect damage, despite heavy and frequent insecticide applications.

Insect-resistant eggplant relies on a bacterial gene derived from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that expresses an insecticidal protein in plant tissues. It is the same gene used to produce first-generation Bt cotton hybrids, which were rapidly adopted by Indian farmers after commercialization in 2002. Not only did Bt cotton offer improved fiber quality, but it also required less spraying of expensive insecticides, resulting in higher income for farmers. Projections from nine years of laboratory and field trials of the Bt eggplant indicated similar potential. Yet Bt eggplant was rejected by India’s political system.

Opponents mobilized around the question: Why does India need Bt brinjal? Existing varieties offer great diversity for farmers and consumers alike.

The answer from India’s official regulators—the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC)—was precise. Farmers lose up to 70 percent of their crops to the fruit and shoot borer (FSB, Leucinodes orbonalis), which weakens the plant—reducing yield—and makes many fruits unmarketable. Insecticides are costly, often ineffective, destroy beneficial insects, promote resistance in the FSB and leave residues (some unregulated and toxic) on marketed fruits. The FSB is not well controlled by insecticides because of its reproductive biology: larvae, soon after hatching, penetrate the plant’s interior tissue, where sprays cannot reach. Farmer incomes suffer from the high cost of cultivation and heavy crop losses. Conventional breeding offers no solution, since there is no resistance to the FSB in the brinjal genome.

Testing a Genetically Engineered Eggplant

The Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company (MAHYCO) developed Event EE-1, based on the Bt cry1Ac gene, to create the first FSB-resistant transgenic eggplant in 2002. In test trials, the Bt protein controlled target insects effectively; FSB-directed insecticides were reduced by 80 percent, and total insecticide use decreased by 42 percent. In the All-India Coordinated Research Project trials, yields of top-grade marketable crops roughly doubled in comparison with non-Bt controls. Tests for weediness, pollen flow, growth, toxicity, composition, nutrition and allergenicity detected no risks. Based on these results for hybrids, public-sector institutions introduced the transgene into open-pollinated varieties (OPVs) for field testing, beginning in 2007.

Farmers grow both hybrids and OPVs. Hybrids produce higher yields, but their seeds are costlier to produce, and must be purchased every year. Varieties “breed true,” generating seeds with their identical phenotype, allowing farmers to save seeds for future plantings. Hybrids and varieties cover about 40 and 60 percent of the eggplant crop area, respectively. This market segmentation facilitated a unique public-private collaboration, beginning in 2003. MAHYCO shared its technology with public institutions in India—as well as in Bangladesh and the Philippines—for development of transgenic varieties. This collaboration was assisted by an international partnership: The Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project II (ABSPII), a consortium funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and led by Cornell University, itself a public-private hybrid institution, located in Ithaca, New York.

Public institutions in India developed locally popular varieties with the insect-resistant trait donated by MAHYCO. To create regionally appropriate cultivars, ABSPII worked with three public-sector partners: Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, which developed four transformed varieties for southern India; the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, which developed six for the southwest; and the Indian Institute of Vegetable Research in Varanasi, which developed both hybrids and OPVs for the northern and eastern regions. MAHYCO continued to concentrate on hybrids, assuming that many farmers would eventually favor them for their yield advantage.

In contrast to Bt cotton, more brinjal OPVs from the public sector than hybrids from the private sector were planned for release. For farmers, this would mean a choice between two types of insect-resistant cultivars: the lower-cost and savable seeds of varieties, or the higher-yielding, more expensive hybrid seeds. This unique arrangement was not, however, widely known or understood in public discourse.

Political Rejection

In October 2009, an Expert Committee of the GEAC concluded that the insect-resistant trait in brinjal, for both hybrid and open-pollinated varieties, was “effective in controlling target pests, safe to the environment, non-toxic as determined by toxicity and animal feeding tests, nonallergenic and has potential to benefit the farmers.” Minister of Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh immediately announced that he would not accept this conclusion, but would instead open public consultations in a tour of seven Indian cities, placing a moratorium on Bt eggplant for the interim. The Minister endorsed the opposition’s claims of inadequate official science and hypothetical environmental risk, as well as the threat of foreign control over India’s food supply.

The cabinet was divided. Minister of Agriculture Sharad Pawar expressed concern that a unilateral rejection of scientific conclusions would discourage ongoing research in Indian public institutions on transgenic potato, tomato, rice, mustard, chickpea, groundnut and pigeon pea. But rules governing transgenic crops fall under India’s Environment Protection Act, empowering the Ministry of Environment and Forests, not the Ministries of Agriculture or of Science and Technology. Moreover, many state governments urged caution and more testing. Except for the ruling Congress Party, all political parties had opposed “genetically modified organisms” in their 2009 election manifestoes.

Why did state governments not support their eggplant farmers, as they had Bt cotton farmers? Political arithmetic counts. There are only 1.4 million eggplant farmers, controlling about 550,000 hectares of land. Most grow multiple crops, and there is no cohesive eggplant producers’ lobby. Cotton farmers number 6.3 million, on 9.4 million hectares. Furthermore, cotton is a major industrial input and earns significant export revenues.

Critiques from Indian and international scientists pressured Minister Ramesh to reconsider his decision. In 2010 he asked six of India’s leading science academies to assess the crop’s safety. Their report confirmed the original conclusions of the GEAC, but the moratorium holds indefinitely. The government may eventually alter this position, perhaps from a change in cabinet politics, or perhaps in recognition of the possibility that farmers will otherwise find means of obtaining illicit Bt brinjal “stealth seeds”—just as they did with Bt cotton before it was officially deregulated.