Area under Bt cotton to touch five lakh hectares in State

May 05, 2011 11:40 am | Updated November 17, 2021 01:15 am IST - Bangalore:

RCH-2 Bt Cotton being harvested at a farm near Salem.(to go with Balaji's story) Shaju John

RCH-2 Bt Cotton being harvested at a farm near Salem.(to go with Balaji's story) Shaju John

With pre-monsoon showers in several parts of the State and improved market price, the area under Bt cotton is set to touch five lakh hectares in the kharif season — an increase of over a lakh hectares from the last kharif season.

Farmers are keen to bring more area under cotton this year because of the handsome returns they got last season. Cotton rates skyrocketed to Rs. 8,000 per quintal during the last season, an official in the Agriculture Department told The Hindu.

Bt cotton would form more than 75 per cent of the total area under cotton in the State. It has made a huge progress as evident by an exponential increase in its cultivated area from 1.46 lakh hectares in 2007 kharif season to 3.95 lakh hectares in 2010, the official said.

The official pointed out that despite controversies and misgivings about Bt cotton, many farmers have been switching over to the hybrid variety in several districts on account of high profit and aggressive marketing by private companies. Many growers in Mysore, Chamarajanagar, Haveri, Gulbarga, Raichur, Shimoga, Bagalkot and Belgaum districts have switched over to Bt cotton.

As many as 17 major seed companies, including Mahyo, Rasi Seeds Ltd. And Ganga Cauvery Seeds, are involved in convincing farmers about the benefits of Bt cotton.

In the 2010 season, Bt cotton was grown on 9.4 million hectares in the country or 85.5 per cent of the total estimated 11 million hectares under cotton in India.

Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat are major Bt cotton growing States in the country, according to the latest global status report of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA).

T.M. Manjunath, agricultural entomologist, said that Bt cotton, developed for control of bollworms, continued to be the only agri-biotech product approved by the Centre since March 2002. The number of farmers adopting this also increased from 20,000 in 2002 to over six million in 2010 in the country.

According to ISAAA, the number of cotton hybrids approved for marketing in India has gone up from 3 in 2003 and 4 in 2004 to 20 in 2005, 62 in 2006, 131 in 2007, 274 in 2008, 522 in 2009 and 780 (including one open pollinated variety) in 2010. Of the total 780, 438 hybrids incorporated the dual gene Bollgard-II event of Monsanto.

Following increase in the area under Bt cotton, seed companies sought increase in the price of seeds and the State Government allowed firms to hike prices.

However, shortage of seeds forced farmers to stage protests in Mysore and Chamarajanagar districts last week.The price of Bt-II variety was increased from Rs. 750 per packet of 450 gm to Rs. 930 per packet.

The rate of Bt-I variety was raised from Rs. 650 per packet to Rs. 830 for the new season. States such Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab have also hike prices of seeds for the 2011 kharif season.

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