Farmers destroy DuPont transgenic rice

A trans­genic rice vari­ety, cur­rent­ly under tri­als at the Krishi
Vig­nan Kendra of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Agri­cul­ture Sci­ences (UAS) in Dodd­a­bal­la­pur taluk, near here, was destroyed by farm­ers on Wednes­day.

A trans­genic rice vari­ety, cur­rent­ly under tri­als at the Krishi
Vig­nan Kendra of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Agri­cul­ture Sci­ences (UAS) in Dodd­a­bal­la­pur taluk, near here, was destroyed by farm­ers on Wednes­day.

A group of sick­le-wield­ing farm­ers, owing alle­giance to the Kar­nata­ka Rajya Raitha Sang­ha (KRRS), barged into the 30-acre KVK premis­es at Hadon­a­hal­li, where the hybrid rice Seed Pro­duc­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (SPT) devel­oped by DuPont is under­go­ing ‘event selec­tion tri­als’ on a one-acre area, and com­mit­ted the
act.

About 30 activists entered the fenced one-acre area around 8.40 a.m., and destroyed the crop in about an hour’s time before the Dodd­a­bal­la­pur Rur­al
police arrest­ed them.

75 p.c. loss

An offi­cial at KVK esti­mat­ed that the farm­ers destroyed about 75 per cent of the crop. Fol­low­ing the inci­dent, the UAS has decid­ed to destroy the remain­ing crop and can­cel the field tri­al.

“The UAS has under­tak­en the tri­al clan­des­tine­ly, and farm­ers in the neigh­bour­hood have been kept in the dark.

“We will not allow field tri­als of trans­genic crops devel­oped by
multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies in our area,” KRRS leader and vet­eri­nar­i­an C.S. Srini­vas, told The Hin­du. For, there is always a fear of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, he said.

The event selec­tion tri­als have been approved by the Genet­ic Engi­neer­ing Approval Com­mit­tee .

Accord­ing to a Green­peace activist, SPT tech­nol­o­gy is a pro­pri­etary tech­nol­o­gy of DuPont that allows increase of large quan­ti­ties of genet­i­cal­ly male ster­ile female inbred par­ent seed.

A top UAS offi­cial said that the project came to the uni­ver­si­ty through Union Depart­ment of Biotech­nol­o­gy for a peri­od of one year, and that the uni­ver­si­ty was only a facil­i­ta­tor and reg­u­la­tor of bio-safe­ty on field.

“It is unfor­tu­nate that the inci­dent took place when the pad­dy was ready for har­vest­ing over the next 7 to 10 days.”

Dis­play boards put up at the field on infor­ma­tion about the tri­als said that the pad­dy had been sown between July 20 and July 23, and trans­plant­ed on August 12.

The dura­tion of the crop is 140 days.

The tri­al is being mon­i­tored by Head, Depart­ment of Genet­ics and Plant Breed­ing at UAS Shaila­ja Hit­tal­mani, while N. Rajan­na is the Pro­gramme Coor­di­na­tor.

A few farm­ers own­ing land in close prox­im­i­ty to the research sta­tion also said that they had been asked not to grow pad­dy dur­ing this sea­son.

“I nor­mal­ly grow pad­dy, but the uni­ver­si­ty author­i­ties asked me not to raise pad­dy crop this sea­son. We were not told the rea­son,” N. Srini­vas, who owns two acres adjoin­ing the KVK, said and added that the author­i­ties had informed about the pos­si­ble cross­ing if he raised pad­dy dur­ing this sea­son.

Mean­while, vice-pres­i­dent fo the KRRS Venka­ta Red­dy said that the genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied rice field tri­als had major vio­la­tions and that the local pan­chay­at was not informed. Though the Hadon­a­hal­li Gram Pan­chay­at pres­i­dent H.A. Nagara­ju acknowl­edged that infor­ma­tion of the field tri­als had not been giv­en to the pan­chay­at, he, how­ev­er, said KVK had ben­e­fit­ed
farm­ers in the vicin­i­ty.

Six­teen farm­ers who were arrest­ed on charges of tres­pass­ing and destruc­tion of prop­er­ty were lat­er released on bail.

Video at http://qik.com/video/19140535/i‑say-no-to-gm-rice