Gene revolution reaches the poorest farmers in India

After years of living under the threat of devastating epidemics of downy mildew, India’s poorest farmers have been offered a lifeline in the form of a new disease-resistant pearl millet hybrid. The hybrid has been produced in record time using modern biotechnology techniques.

Pearl millet is known as the ‘poor man’s crop’ because it grows in the hottest, driest places where no other crop can survive. Tens of millions of poor people depend on its grain to eat and its leaves and stems to feed their animals. Pearl millet is very important in India, making downy mildew a particular concern:

• More than half of the world’s pearl millet is grown in India where it can survive almost anything, except downy mildew.
• Downy mildew epidemics can destroy up to one third of India’s pearl millet.
• The most popular pearl millet hybrid grown in India is now showing signs of susceptibility to the disease.
• If the disease hits the crop in epidemic proportions then farmers will face losses in grain yield worth at least US$ 8 million.

In February 2005, India released its first hybrid using modern DNA techniques. An international team of scientists, with funding from the UK Department for International Development (DFID) that is managed by Professor Witcombe from the University of Wales, UK, have been working for more than a decade to produce a new hybrid resistant to downy mildew.

It is remarkable that revolutionary DNA techniques have been used to improve a crop grown only by the poorest farmers in India and Africa. Until now, agricultural biotechnology has been driven almost exclusively by the private sector for farmers in the developed world. This research changes that and gives the poorest farmers a real chance of benefiting from the Gene Revolution.

One benefit of using biotechnology is the speed with which new varieties can be produced. Traditional plant breeding techniques can be a slow process, so scientists turned to biotechnology for answers. The scientists developed tools to identify the genetic sequences in pearl millet required for resistance to downy mildew. Resistant genes were transferred into one of the parents of the new hybrid. No foreign genes were introduced and the hybrid was produced naturally, so the product was the same as that from traditional breeding methods – not a Genetically Modified Organism (GMO). The use of GMOs has been hugely controversial in India.

The application of biotechnology has produced this new hybrid in a third of the time usually required. This has given farmers an advantage in the fight against the disease. However, downy mildew is a resilient disease that will eventually manage to get past these defences. Further advances are likely to be needed in the future, and biotechnology will certainly have a key role to play. More research is helping the fight against crop diseases:

• The Department of Biotechnology of Government of India has funded the Central Arid Zone Research Institute in Rajasthan to incorporate drought tolerance and downy mildew resistance into parent material of the most common millet hybrids grown in India.
• They will also explore elite landrace lines as a resource for new resistance genes. 
• The private sector in India (such as seed company Pioneer Hybrid) and other donors are using this research to breed for other important traits, such as fodder quality.
• The work is now being extended to Africa so that farmers there can benefit from high yielding hybrids in the same way as Indian farmers.

Source(s):
The research institutes were: ICRISAT-Patancheru, India; John Innes Centre (JIC), UK; CAZS Natural Resources, University of Wales, UK; Institute of Grassland Environmental Research (IGER), UK; CCS Haryana Agricultural University, India

Funded by: UK Department for International Development Plant Sciences Research Programme

id21 Research Highlight: 21 July 2005

Further Information:
Professor John Witcombe
Plant Sciences Research Programme
CAZS Natural Resources
University of Wales, Bangor
Gwynedd, Wales
UK
LL57 2UW

Tel: +44 (0) 1248 382922
Contact the contributor: j.r.witcombe@bangor.ac.uk

Department for International Development, UK

Plant Sciences Research Programme, UK

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'Does low external input agriculture reach the poor?'

'Crop wars: can obstacles to genetically modified crops be removed?'

'Separating fact from fiction –GM crops in developing countries'

'Farmers and plant breeders: an essential partnership for poverty reduction'

Debating GM crops - id21 insights