If one were to look for what characterised a nation’s science, the first weeks of May 2026 offered telling examples of the contrasting achievements of India and China. Both examples were in the field of agricultural sciences. If the research and development (R&D) breakthrough by China made international headlines, the one by India merited a small report in the inside pages of domestic newspapers. At a time when climate change, drastic depletion of water resources and declining yields have made farm research a major focus world over, the difference between the two developments is striking. While China's breakthrough on improving rapeseed cultivation is spectacular, a turning point that will end its dependence on imports and make its technology world class, India appears to be stuck on irrelevancies: development of liquid jaggery by an institute of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). Liquid jaggery incidentally is available in plenty with dozens of companies.
If that is an unfair comparison, my justification is that ICAR has had nothing to show for itself in several decades except the development of two genome-edited (GE) rice varieties last year. And that has done precious little for India’s farmers because the GE varieties have not been released for commercial cultivation. This is because the GE rice was developed with patented CRISPR tools that can be used only for laboratory research; commercialisation of the research entails the payment of hefty fees to the patent holder (see ‘Is India’s CRISPR feat with rice a costly proposition?’, Down To Earth, 1-15 June, 2025). Although grand plans have been announced for using genome editing in a range of crops, including pulses, nothing has moved forward on account of the lack of editing tools. So, we have had to settle for the ICAR-Sugarcane Breeding Institute’s “intensified” efforts to promote liquid jaggery by licensing the product in a bigger way. “Why?”, one might well ask, since liquid jaggery is widely available in the market.
China’s advancement on rapeseed is significant because it moves the country’s primary oilseed crop grown under traditional weather-dependent methods to precision “smart breeding”. Since it will end the monopoly of global seed suppliers, the development has been reported by major agriculture journals and websites. What is the breakthrough that has created so much of a stir? In mid-May, China’s Science and Technology Daily reported that the Jiangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences in collaboration with Huazhong Agricultural University and Suzhou Lasuo Biochip Technology Company had officially released a 20K solid-phase gene chip for rapeseed (Brassica napus), codenamed Zhongxin Oil No. 1. It was a typical Chinese way of bringing cutting-edge technology to the market with leading public research laboratories and academies teaming up with the private companies to hasten the application of an innovation.
The report details the fascinating road to the development of a technology that will now allow China to pare down costly oilseed and cooking oil imports. It also reveals the carefully structured way in which success was achieved over a six-year period despite major failures along the way. It says that the Chinese research team compiled more than 1,600 experimental notebooks, wrote over 2,700 experimental reports, and collected more than 10 million scanning images. At one time, the failure rate reached 99.9 per cent.
The actual breakthrough came in April last year when results of the field trials were released on April 23, during a field meeting of the National Council for Rapeseed Yield Improvement and the apex Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS). At a demonstration field spanning 400 hectares in Suichuan County, a triple-crop system of rice-rice-rapeseed using the new variety Zhongyu Zao (Early) No. 1 gave record yields. The objective of listing some of these details here is to illustrate the comprehensive way that China tackled the rapeseed project—evidenced from the number of institutes involved in the research—and to emphasise the need for young blood in missions of this nature. Another important point is the scientific credentials and eminence of the team leader. The project was headed by Wang Hanzhong, a rapeseed genetics and breeding engineer, who is also vice president of CAAS.
Sadly, ICAR has neither the depth nor the diverse expertise that China pulls in for priority research projects. Lethargy and a hierarchical structure have made meaningful research in ICAR almost impossible because no performance audits have been undertaken. And attempts to reform its functioning have always been stonewalled by a clique of powerful scientists who control it tandem with the bureaucracy (see ‘Science under siege’, Down To Earth, 16-31 October, 2013).
Never before has India needed a sharp research focus and strategy to revitalise its agriculture than now, in the face of increasing vulnerability from climate fluctuations and soil challenges. The oilseed sector, in particular, needs urgent attention because imports are ballooning to unsustainable levels. The Prime Minister needs to do more than just call on the people to reduce their consumption of cooking oil. That simply will not work because a large swathe of the population is unable to afford cooking oil, much less splurge on it. But consumption is certainly rising. Over the past 11 years, India’s vegetable oil imports doubled—from 7.9 million tonnes in 2013-14 to 16.4 million tonnes in 2024- 25. In value terms, the surge has been sharper, rising from US $7.2 billion to $20.8 billion, owing in part to a rupee in constant decline.
Narendra Modi needs to emulate what Rajiv Gandhi did in the 1980s. He set up a Technology Mission on Oilseeds and drew together technocrats and domain experts and gave a mandate to scientists and bureaucrats to put together a strategy to make India self-sufficient in vegetable oil. Imports at the time were around $1 billion annually. Steered by the legendary Verghese Kurien, who headed the National Dairy Development Board, and others like Sam Pitroda, a technocrat, Rajiv Gandhi pulled off the impossible. For the first and only time, India became self-sufficient in cooking oil, a fact that was acknowledged last year by the government. By 1990, instead of importing oil, India was exporting oilcakes worth $600 million a year. The turnaround was achieved primarily by using high-yielding varieties of oilseeds, applying the right management methods, strictly calibrating the market and giving small farmers some support. As Kurien recounted later, this was a critical aspect, trying to restructure the marketing system to ensure the small producer was not fleeced by intermediaries or oil kings.
The Modi government has launched its own National Mission on Edible Oils-Oilseeds (NMEO-Oilseeds) with the same objective of achieving self-reliance in oilseeds by 2030-31. It could do well by following the largeness of vision that Rajiv Gandhi showed. Can it keep the farmer, and not the trader, at the centre of the project?