India may have to wait for years to witness the entry of a genetically modified food crop in the market as the centre has come out with an approval condition that the experts are saying is “impossible” to meet.

The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) on Friday has asked the agro-biotech companies to submit “validated protocol for detection of 0.01 per cent level contamination” before clearing multi-location research trials of genetically modified rice, okra, maize and brinjal, official sources said.

This means unless the crop developers are able to find out how would they spot presence of trace amount of bt protein (0.01 per cent) which may have been leaked to other non-target plants, the centre will not approve multi-location trials, which is a must before commercial release.

“But such a stringent contamination detection level is unheard of anywhere in the world. The technology simply does not exist,” Bhagirath Choudhary, the India representative of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) told Deccan Herald.

Best standard

The best standard is from the European Union which stipulates a detection level of 0.9 per cent. The Japanese standard is five per cent while the USA does not have any detection level standards.  

Arguing that contamination should not be an issue till large scale trial, Mr Choudhary said such a step might also ruin the research in the green house as 0.01 per cent contamination is a common occurrence there. The technology to detect such low level of contamination simply doesn’t exist.

Even as the research was going on for quite some time, the anti-GM activists including have protested time and again on any governmental plan for allowing their commercialisation. 

The GEAC did not approve six transgenic bt rice hybrids, three GM bt okra hybrids and bt brinjal being developed at places like University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad. 

Round up ready corn hybrids that can survive a particular insecticide, yield guard corns with higher productivity and flex cotton hybrids that produces better quality yarns were also not approved by the committee.

Interestingly, the committee has approved import of soybean oil obtained from round-up ready Soybean by the Solvent Extractors’ Association of India.

Large scale field trials of new varieties of bt cotton expressing new genes did not get approval as the bio-safety studies are inadequate. This includes cotton hybrids expressing Cry1C gene, sources said.