370 Varieties of Bt Cotton gets the Sale Licences in Maharashtra

It looks like the government of Maharashtra have stepped up its watchfulness against co-marketing of Bt cotton seeds. The state government has approved the license for  370 varieties of Bt cotton from 42 seed companies. Farmers have been requested to make the purchase from these companies.

This is a result of the move taken by the government against co-marketing of brands for Bt cotton seed companies. approx 74 companies have been dismissed from the brand marketing licences. A few months ago, Maharashtra had made it mandatory for Bt cotton seed companies in the state to submit seed samples, which they wished to sell in the market, to government-approved laboratories for getting them tested in order to obtain sale licenses.

MS Gholap, director of agriculture, inspection and quality control (I&QC) said that seed companies were required to get the DNA and DUS tests done and submit the acknowledgement from the laboratories to the agriculture department for obtaining licences. The step was taken to prevent the sale of illegal varieties in the market, industry observers said.

Gholap pointed out that there are three agriculture universities in the state that conducts such tests in addition to the Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR), Nagpur and National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune. DUS testing is a way of determining whether a newly bred variety differs from existing varieties within the same species (the distinctness part), whether the characteristics used to establish distinctness are expressed uniformly (the uniformity part) and that these characteristics do not change over subsequent generations (the stability part). DNA markers are used for assessing the genetic purity. There are over 150 companies in the market, which include around 65 seed companies. Usually, seed companies enter into the distribution arrangement with companies to widen their market reach.

On a national level, annual seed market for the legally recognized varieties is estimated at around 4.5-4.8 crore packets (of 450 gram each) and the area under the fibre crop is around 120 lakh hectares. Maharashtra is aiming 40 lakh hectares for cotton sowing this season and normally some 1,6 crore packets of seeds are required for a season, Gholap said. A major portion of the crop is in Vidarbha, Marathwada and Khandesh pockets of the state.