India’s cotton financial system isn’t in nice form.
This, regardless of the benefit the nation has as a producer of the pure fibre and its textile exports dealing with solely 27% obligation – as in opposition to China’s 54%, Vietnam’s 46%, Bangladesh’s 37%, Indonesia’s 32% and Sri Lanka’s 44% – beneath US President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal tariff” coverage.
The trigger for concern is manufacturing.
India’s cotton output within the 2024-25 advertising 12 months (October-September) is projected at simply over 294 lakh bales (lb; 1 lb=170 kg), the bottom because the 290 lb of 2008-09. Manufacturing has been on a declining path because the peak of 398 lb in 2013-14 (see chart 1). A fall from nearly 400 lb to beneath 300 lb may even be termed catastrophic.
Supply: Cotton Advisory Board/Cotton Affiliation of India /Committee on Cotton Manufacturing & Consumption
The cultivation of genetically modified (GM) cotton hybrids – incorporating alien genes remoted from a soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt – had led to not solely a near-trebling of manufacturing (from 136 lb to 398 lb), but in addition a 139-fold soar in exports (from 0.8 lb to 117 lb), between 2002-03 and 2013-14.
Subsequently, nonetheless, exports have dipped at the same time as imports have risen. India’s cotton imports this 12 months, at 30 lb, are slated to surpass its exports of 17 lb (chart 2).
Supply: Cotton Advisory Board/Cotton Affiliation of India /Committee on Cotton Manufacturing & Consumption
A unique bollworm
The above manufacturing slide, and India turning from a big cotton exporter to a internet importer, is principally courtesy of the pink bollworm (PBW). That is an insect pest, whose larvae bore into the bolls (fruits) of the cotton plant. The bolls include seeds from which the white fluffy cotton fibres or lint develop. The PBW caterpillars feed on the creating seeds and the lint, inflicting yield loss in addition to lint discolouration.
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The GM cotton now grown in India have two Bt genes, ‘cry1Ac’ and ‘cry2Ab’, coding for proteins poisonous to the American bollworm, noticed bollworm and cotton leafworm pests. The double-gene hybrids initially supplied some safety in opposition to the PBW too, however that effectiveness has dissipated over time.
The rationale for it’s that the PBW is a monophagous pest, which feeds completely on cotton. That is not like the opposite three pests which can be polyphagous and survive on a number of host crops: The American bollworm larvae infest even maize, jowar (sorghum), tomato, bhindi (okra), chana (chickpea) and lobia (cowpea).
Being monophagous enabled the PBW larvae to regularly construct resistance to the toxins from the present Bt cotton hybrids. The PBW inhabitants that turned resistant from constantly feeding on these vegetation finally overtook and changed those that have been inclined. The pest’s brief life cycle (25-35 days from egg laying to grownup moth stage), permitting it to finish at the very least 3-4 generations in a single crop season of 180-270 days, additional accelerated the resistance breakdown course of.
A latest article within the Nature scientific journal confirmed the PBW creating resistance to each cry1Ac and cry2Ab toxins by 2014, about 12 years after Indian farmers started cultivating Bt cotton.
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The incidence of the pest crossing the “financial threshold stage” – the place the worth of crop harm exceeds the price of management – was recorded from 2014 within the central (Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh), 2017 in south (Telangana, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu) and 2021 in north (Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab) rising zones.
Not for nothing that all-India per-hectare cotton lint yields, which elevated from a median of 302 kg in 2002-03 to 566 kg in 2013-14, have plunged to 436-437 kg over the last two years.
Deploying new genes
Main Indian seed firms have developed GM cotton hybrids deploying new genes from Bt, which they declare confer resistance to PBW.
The Hyderabad-based Bioseed Analysis India, a division of DCM Shriram Ltd, is conducting confined subject trials of hybrids primarily based on its proprietary ‘BioCotX24A1’ transgenic know-how/occasion expressing the ‘cry8Ea1’ gene present in Bt.
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The Ministry of Setting’s Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) had, in late-July 2024, permitted Bioseed to undertake Biosafety Analysis Degree-1 (BRL-1) trials of its occasion at six areas in MP, Karnataka and AP. The trials, in remoted plots of no more than one-acre measurement every, are supposed to consider the expression of the brand new alien genes and the agronomic efficiency of the hybrids/traces into which they’re launched. BRL trials additionally entail technology of knowledge on meals and feed toxicity and environmental security (residue evaluation, pollen circulate research, and so on).
Bioseed is searching for the GEAC’s go-ahead for a second 12 months of BRL-1 trials in the course of the 2025 kharif season at extra areas throughout the south, central and north zones.
Rasi Seeds Pvt Ltd has additionally utilized to the GEAC for conducting BRL-1 trials (first 12 months) of its PBW-resistant GM cotton hybrids within the upcoming planting season. The Coimbatore-based firm’s transgenic occasions specific an artificial ‘cry1c’ gene, additionally derived from Bt.
The Nagpur-headquartered Ankur Seeds is one other firm engaged on commercialising cotton hybrids immune to PBW. It has entered into an settlement with the Nationwide Botanical Analysis Institute (NBRI) at Lucknow for sourcing the latter’s GM cotton traces expressing a ‘chimeric’ Bt protein (a chimeric gene is created by combining segments of various Bt genes. The resultant new gene encodes a protein with enhanced or novel insecticidal properties).
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Ankur Seeds, it’s learnt, will quickly method the Division of Biotechnology’s Overview Committee on Genetic Manipulation to undertake first-year BRL-1 trials for NBRI’s ‘Occasion 519’. Based mostly on its advice, GEAC could grant the required approval.
The GEAC, in its assembly on July 29 final 12 months, had additionally allowed a preliminary ‘occasion choice trial’ for 5 GM cotton traces (ASCOT101 to 105) of the Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar (Maharashtra)-based Ajeet Seeds Pvt Ltd, expressing a PBW-resistant ‘cry2Aa’ gene from Bt.
Regulatory hurdles
All these trials – occasion choice, BRL-1 (two years) and BRL-2 (one 12 months on as much as 2.5-acres plots), along with finishing up the preliminary genetic transformations and testing in contained laboratory or greenhouse/net-house circumstances – take time for the outcomes to achieve farmers’ fields.
The regulatory boundaries, plus opposition from environmental teams and the necessity to receive state authorities concurrence for conducting subject trials, have ensured that no new GM crop has been commercialised in India after Monsanto’s Bollgard-2 Bt cotton in Could 2006.
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The seed trade’s hope is that the havoc wreaked by PBW, main to the current emergency-like scenario in cotton, could immediate the Centre to undertake a extra proactive method with regard to new GM hybrid occasions. That is attainable particularly in cotton, which isn’t seen as a meals crop not like mustard or brinjal.
In her 2025-26 Union Finances speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had introduced a five-year ‘Mission for Cotton Productiveness’. It goals to supply “one of the best of science & know-how help” to farmers and “guarantee a gradual provide of high quality cotton” for the Indian textile trade.
That urgency could have gotten added impetus from the menace posed to the nation’s cotton manufacturing by PBW and the chance opened up for its textile exports from Trump’s reciprocal tariffs.
