Pink Bollworm Infestation in Bt Cotton

What is the issue?

• India is the only Bt cotton-growing country facing the problem of pink bollworm infestation.
• A look into the various factors that make it a problem unique for India and the consequences therein is essential.

What is the infestation concern?

• The pink bollworm infestation is plaguing cotton farmers.
• Monsanto is an American agro-tech company that released the Bt cotton in India.
• Bollgard 2 or BG-2 is Monsanto’s second generation insecticidal technology for cotton.
• BG has a single bacterial gene called CryA1C, and BG-2 has CryA1C and Cry2AB2.
• Both are designed to protect the crop against pink bollworm.
• But the pest has grown resistant to the toxins produced by this trait.
• BG began failing against the pest in 2009, and BG-2 began failing in 2014.

What is the significance?

• Cost - As a result of this, farmers now spend more on pesticides to control infestations.
• This, along with the high cost of Bt seeds, is driving farmers to deprivation.
• India - Interestingly, none of the other 14 Bt cotton-growing countries have seen this resistance.
• China still successfully controls pink bollworm with first-generation Bt cotton.
• The U.S. and Australia are moving on to third-generation BG-3 without having faced this problem.

Why is it a problem unique for India?

• Hybrids are crosses between two crops that often see higher yields than their parents, in a genetic phenomenon called heterosis.
• All other Bt cotton-growing countries mainly grow open-pollinated cotton varieties rather than hybrids.
• But India restricted itself to cultivating long-duration hybrids since the introduction of Bt cotton in 2002.
• This is said to be the reason for the pink bollworm growing resistant to toxins in India.

What are the factors behind?

• Agreement - Monsanto licensed its BG and BG-2 traits to Indian seed companies.
• The agreement restricted the introduction of these traits to hybrids only.
• Cropping pattern - When Monsanto introduced Bt cotton in India, the technology was so popular.
• Many cotton farmers shifted to it in large numbers.
• However, absence of open-pollinated Bt option forced many farmers to shift en masse to hybrids.
• From 2002 to 2011, the area under cotton hybrids rose from 2% in north India and 40% elsewhere to 96% across the country.
• Seed protection - India is the only country whose intellectual property laws have never prevented its farmers from either saving or selling seeds.
• Other countries restrict saving and selling of seeds in various degrees.
• Some countries allow farmers to reuse seeds from a protected plant variety, but not to sell them.
• In the U.S., where plant varieties are patented, the patented seeds cannot even be reused.
• Seed Companies - Without seed protection mechanism, several seed companies in India prefer hybrids.
• This is because unlike open-pollinated varieties, hybrids lose their genetic stability when their seeds are replanted.
• This compels farmers to repurchase seeds each year and in a way protects corporate revenues.

What are the consequences?

• One adverse consequence is resulted from the cost of the hybrids.
• Density - Besides, hybrids are also bigger and bushier.
• This forces farmers to cultivate them at low densities of 11,000 to 16,000 crops per acre.
• This is suboptimal, as countries like the U.S. and Brazil plant cotton at 80,000 to 100,000 per acre.
• The low densities also drive Indian farmers to grow them longer so that they produce enough cotton.
• Toxicity - The introduction of the Bt gene into only one parent of Indian hybrids, as is the practice, is itself a problem.
• The resulting hybrids are hemizygous, which means that they express only one copy of the Bt gene.
• They thus produce cotton bolls that have some seeds toxic to the pink bollworm and some that are not.
• Unlike this, the homozygous seeds of open-pollinated varieties in the U.S., China or Australia have 100% toxic seeds.
• The problem is hemizygous hybrids allow pink bollworms to survive on toxin-free seeds when they are vulnerable newborns.
• But this is only a hypothesis, and experiments are needed to confirm this.

How does pink bollworm affect crops?

• When all the above factors combine with the pink bollworm’s biology, it creates favourable conditions for resistance.
• The pest does its most damage in the latter half of the cotton-growing season.
• It does not consume any other crop that grows then.
• So, the long duration of Indian cotton crops, between 160 and 300 days, allows this pest to thrive and evolve resistance.
• Contradictorily, other cotton-growing countries strictly terminate the crop within 160 days, arresting resistance growth if any.

What is the way out?

• The National Seed Association of India suggested the government to encourage a move back to Bollgard.
• Notably, Monsanto has not patented BG in India.
• Farmers should move swiftly to the short-duration crop varieties.
• This is where Monsanto’s first-generation Bollgard comes in.
• Seed companies cannot develop open-pollinated varieties with BG-2, but they can with BG as Monsanto did not patent BG in India.

What are the challenges?

• Moving back - Some say that when the many countries are moving to BG-3, moving back to BG in India would be a bad idea.
• This is because the problem was not with the BG trait but with long-duration cotton.
• Pests - Even if BG-2 does not fend off the pink bollworm, it still protects against other pests like tobacco cutworm and American bollworm.
• The presence of two Bt genes in BG-2 means it will be more effective than BG in delaying resistance against these pests.
• Resistance - Another challenge is that even if government incentivises a return to BG, the seed companies are unlikely to stop making BG-2 seeds.
• If India cultivates both BG and BG-2, simultaneously, that may accelerate resistance among pests.
• This could trigger the emergence of new cotton pests.
• India erred by not clamping down on long-duration crops when Bt cotton was first introduced.
• At least now it must base its policy on sound science and implement it stringently.

Source: The Hindu