KARACHI, April l9: The spectacular growth of Bt cotton in India has delivered unprecedented benefits to its economy.

India that used to have one of the lowest cotton yields in the world has become an exporter of cotton.

In 2007, Chile and Poland joined in, and raised the number of countries planting biotech crops to 23.

This comprised 12 developing and 11 industrial countries. The accumulated coverage of biotech crops between 1996 and 2007 increased 67-fold, exceeding two thirds of a billion hectares at 690 million hectares, making it the fastest adopted crop technology in the recent history.

These facts were highlighted in a report, Global Status of Commercialised Biotech/GM Crops: 2007, by Clive James, who heads ISSA (International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications) Board of Directors.

The report was launched in Karachi recently at LEJ National Science Information Centre, Karachi University.

The report states that the global area of biotech crops continued to soar in 2007 at a rate of 12 per cent or 12.3 million hectares —the second highest increase in global biotech crop area in the last five years — reaching 114.3 million hectares.

The global market value of biotech crops was $6.9bn representing 16 per cent of the $42.2bn global crop market in 2007.

The same year, biotech crops achieved a very important milestone, the number of poor farmers benefiting from biotech crops in developing countries exceeded 10 million for the first time.

Of the global total of 12 million beneficiary biotech farmers in 2007, over 90 per cent were poor farmers from developing countries.

The report regards this initial contribution of increased small farmer income from biotech groups towards the Millennium Development Goals of reducing poverty by 50 per cent by 2015 as an encouraging development, which has enormous potential in second decade of GM crops commercialisation, 2006 to 2015.

Terming the Indian progress on Bt cotton in six years as remarkable, the report says that the country has reported the highest proportional increase of any biotech crop country in the world with an impressive gain of 63 per cent in 2007.

“The reason for spectacular growth in Bt cotton is that it has consistently delivered unprecedented benefits to farmers and to the nation.

Bt cotton has increased yield up to 50 per cent, reduced insecticide sprays by half, with environmental and health implications, and increased income by up to $250 or more per hectare, which has contributed to social benefits and the alleviation of their poverty.”

Biotech soybean continued to be the principal biotech crop in 2007, followed by maize, cotton, and canola.

It is estimated that of the 114.3 million hectares of biotech crops grown worldwide, approximately nine per cent or 11.2 million hectares of biotech crops were used for bio-fuel production, with over 90 per cent of that hectarage in the US.

The list of countries planting biotech crops includes the US, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, India, China, Paraguay, South Africa, Uruguay, Philippines, Australia, Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, France, Honduras, Czech Republic, Portugal, Germany, Slovakia, Romania and Poland.