Transgenic cotton trials

madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra have started large-scale evaluation of genetically modified Bacillus thuringiensis (b t ) cotton plants, despite the Union government still finalising the protocol for doing so. Both the states got consent from the genetic engineering approval committee.

The decision for large-scale trials has been taken in the wake of significant increase in the yield from b t cotton plants during limited experiments carried out under scientific supervision in various parts of the country. The experiments conducted since 1998 were primarily done to evaluate the effect of an introduced gene that codesthe bt protein.