Saturday, Sep 14, 2002
Saturday, Sep 14, 2002 |
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Andhra Pradesh
By K. Venkateshwarlu
The Director General of ICRISAT, William D. Dar, told presspersons that the first-ever genetically modified groundnuts have reached the field trial stage. Expressing happiness at the achievement, he said, "This is our first major step towards addressing the specific needs of the resource -poor farmers of the semi arid tropics through the application of biotechnological interventions for crop improvement''. The IPCV, widespread in India and Africa, is transmitted by a soil borne fungus and is difficult to control because of its persistence in soil for several years and lack of suitable biocides or resistant genotypes. Dr. K. K. Sharma, who led the group that developed the technology for genetically transforming groundnut, said despite screening of more than 10,000 lines of groundnut germplasm, no traditional source of the resistance to PCV had been identified. After extensive molecular characterisation of the transgenic and preliminary studies in the glasshouse, permission to carry out field trial under controlled conditions was obtained from the Government of India's Department of Biotechnology. All the bio safety protocols were being followed. The work began with genes from the Scottish Crops Research Institute (SCRI), Dundee, U.K. They were sequenced and cloned as part of the collaborative work between the ICRISAT and the SCRI. Dr. Farid Waliyar joined the effort to test these "miracle groundnuts'' at Patancheru, while Dr. Phillippe Delfosse is exploring the possibilities of testing them in Africa against the Africa isolate of the PCV. While working on transgenic crops and putting in place a definitive system for possible development of crops resistant to other diseases, Dr. Dar said the ICRISAT was not ignoring the traditional cross-breeding. It was now growing a field of "golden millet'', the Vitamin A enriched cereal, much like the much talked about "golden rice'', so essential to the poor of the developing countries. Dr. C. Tom Hash, Principal Scientist, Breeding, working on this project in collaboration with nutritionists and plant breeders at the University of Hoenheim, Germany, found that it was now possible to increase pearl millet beta-carotene levels beyond those achieved by conventional plant breeding. This can be done simply by intermating yellow-grained millets of different origins with elevated levels of this micronutrient and then selecting the progeny that are better than their parents. It may take six years for the commercial release.
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