Borlaug advocates gene revolution

The father of green revolution says genetically modified crops are inevitable

Nobel laureate Norman E Borlaug, hailed as father of the green revolution, today defended the use of genetically modified organisms and transgenic crops, maintaining that these could offer numerous new possibilities in future.

While protein-rich maize and Vitamin A-rich 'golden' rice were already under way, several new and nutritious products could be produced in future by transferring the genes from one source to another.

"My bio-technology dreams", Borlaug said, "involve transfer of rice plants' resistance against the dreaded rust diseases to wheat and other cereals and transfer of wheat's proteins (gliadin and glutenin responsible for dough quality) to rice and maize."

He added: "You will be able to eat rice sandwich 50 years from now."

Borlaug, who is in town to participate in the centenary celebrations of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), was delivering the Coromandel Lecture after the presentation of the Borlaug awards for excellence in agricultural research.

The theme of his lecture was "From the green to gene revolution".

The Borlaug award, instituted by the Murugappa group's Coromandel fertilisers, were presented to IARI director S. Nagarajan and Ohio State University soil scientist Rattan Lal.

Talking about the pest-resistant Bt cotton, Borlaug said this was being grown on about nine million hectares by some six million farmers all over the world.

It was estimated that the Bt technology had helped reduce insecticide consumption by whopping 25000 tonnes, besides curbing cases of pesticides poisoning.

Borlaug also ridiculed the proponents of organic farming and said it was "nonsense" to think that you could feed the world without the use of chemical fertilisers.

Despite the impressive increase in food production due to seed-fertiliser-irrigation based technology, several million people still went to bed hungry. "You need to double the food output by 2050 to feed them", Borlaug said and maintained that it was not possible even if all the organic matter available in the world was used for this purpose.

Winner of the Nobel peace prize (1970), Borlaug regretted that the world was spending $900 billion on defence every year while investments in agriculture research were declining.

"This was criminal", especially considering that a large global population did not have access to basic needs like food, education or health facilities.