Should India await honeybee tests before consuming GM mustard?

GM mustard crop. (Representational image)

Did the regulator for genetically modified (GM) plants make haste in recommending the release of a GM mustard hybrid? Last month, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) advised the release of Dhara Mustard Hybrid-11 (DMH-11) for seed production on the condition that its impact on honeybees and other pollinators be undertaken post-release to gather scientific evidence under Indian agro-climatic conditions, and as a precautionary mechanism. Should it have got the studies done first?

This is not the first time that the GEAC has recommended the environmental release of the DMH-11. In May 2017, the GEAC advised the release of the hybrid after satisfying itself that it posed little risk to humans, animals, and the environment. But then the environment ministry had not accepted the recommendation. Instead, it suggested impact studies on honeybees and pollinators to be done before release.

More than five years later, the GEAC has affirmed its decision. The Union government has not said that it has accepted or rejected the GEAC’s recommendation. Approval is supposed to be presumed from the assent by the ministry of the GEAC’s minutes recommending the release, and a letter issued by the ministry to the developer of the hybrid, Deepak Pental, permitting seed production.

During these five-and-a-half years, Pental did not undertake impact studies on honeybees and pollinators. Pental, who was Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University (DU), and his team at DU’s Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants (CGMCP) were not hopeful of the hybrid being released given ideological opposition within the government. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s affiliates in the Sangh parivar — the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, and the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh — were opposed and have reiterated their opposition.

Before the GEAC made its recommendation in 2017, the developers of the hybrid had given a 3,285-page dossier on its biosafety risk assessment. A condensed version was placed on the GEAC’s website for public comments. It said “[E]xposure of honey bees to barnase and barstar proteins is highly unlikely and therefore risk to honey bee population due to cultivation of DMH 11 hybrid is considered negligible.”

After the GEAC’s 2017 decision, Pental had told this author that nectaries of GM mustard were fully developed, and they were found to be full of pollen during the trials that were conducted in Delhi, Punjab, and Rajasthan in 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2014-15 respectively. The DMH-11 has a thicker canopy and more branches, which means more flowers — and more attraction to honeybees.

In his presentation to the GEAC in August, based on a review of studies on the subject, Pental said Canada, the United States, and Australia had not imposed any conditions when releasing GM canola (or rapeseed), which is related to Indian mustard, in 1996, 2002, and 2003 respectively. So, there is a history of its safe use.

Pental said a 2003 study carried out on honeybees feeding on field-grown Basta-resistant rapeseed containing the pat gene showed no difference in bee behaviour and foraging activity on transgenic and non-transgenic plants. The DMH-11 has the bar gene — functionally equivalent to the pat gene — for tolerance to the Basta herbicide.

Pental also told the GEAC that a study from China had reported that the bacteria, from which the barnase and barstar genes are derived, were found to be most prevalent in the ‘honey stomach’ of the bee Apis mellifera, a European species imported and preferred in India for their high yield.

Is GM mustard oil safe? Oils do not contain proteins as they are fatty acids. High temperatures during the solvent extraction process will degrade even those that are present.

In 2018, when a non-governmental organisation had raised an alarm over imports of food containing GM material, this author had spoken to Lalitha Gowda, who was chief scientist of the Mysuru-based Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI) till 2014 (and thereafter a member of various committees of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India). Gowda said she had tested oil samples sent to her by the GEAC. The first such test was in 2007 when the Solvent Extractors’ Association (SEA) had applied for blanket permission to import oil from soybean containing foreign herbicide-tolerance (HT) and insect-resistance (IR) genes. Gowda said the foreign proteins were either absent or in non-detectable traces in the samples she had tested. “We could not get DNA from refined oil. It was impossible to obtain DNA or protein. We said it was not absent, but it was not detectable.” This is recorded in the minutes of GEAC’s June 2007 meeting giving import approval to the SEA.

On November 3, the Supreme Court stayed the environment ministry’s order till November 10 on a petition against its release citing herbicide tolerance as a reason. The soybean and canola oil that India imports are almost all from herbicide tolerant and insect-resistant GM soybean and canola. The herbicide Basta has a history of 30 years of safe use. In India, a root parasite called Orobanche infests the mustard growing areas of Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and even Assam. It drains the mustard plant of nutrients when it is in the flowering stage. The only way to contain the weed is through genetic modification. “To save mustard we must save it from Orobanche,” says PK Rai, Director of the Directorate of Rapeseed-Mustard Research, Bharatpur, Rajasthan.

Vivian is a business journalist for more than three decades. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.