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Hyderabad , Oct. 12

SWARNA Bharat Biotechnics Private Ltd (SBBPL), a consortium of seven leading seed manufacturing companies, has entered into an agreement with the Lucknow-based, National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI) for obtaining Bt cotton technology.

The alliance, once it translates the technology into reality, is expected to provide savings of over Rs 1,000 crore per annum for the Indian farming community on insecticides and over 50 per cent on the Bt cottonseed in comparison to the seed prices of multinational companies, according to the SBBPL representative, Dr P. Sateesh Kumar.

Announcing the details of the technology licensing agreement to newspersons here on Saturday, Dr Kumar said the joint initiatives of SBBPL and NBRI were expected to result in commercialisation of Bt cotton technology of the latter in the next three years. NBRI is already prepared to use the Bt gene technology that is better than the technology currently available in the market, he said.

The members of SBBPL, which include Nuziveedu Seeds, Ganga Kaveri Seeds, Pravardhan Seeds, Prabhat Agri Biotech, Kaveri Seeds, Nandi Seeds, and Vikki's Agro Tech, have a combined turnover of Rs 300 crore with 75 per cent of it contributed by their proprietary cotton hybrids. The consortium has a market share of 30 per cent of total cottonseed market in the country and 50 per cent share of the proprietary cotton hybrid seeds marketed in the country.

``SBBPL was formed with a mandate to help the member companies by sourcing and developing tools of biotechnology applicable to crop improvement and also coordinate the regulatory work related to commercialisation of these transgenic technologies. SBBPL is a novel concept and a first of its kind public-private collaboration to address the concerns of the small and medium sized seed companies with regard to their ability to access the highly expensive biotech technologies. This would consequently enable them retain their competitiveness in the emerging market competition with the multinational seed companies,'' Dr Kumar said.

According to Dr Rakesh Tuli, whose team at NBRI synthesised two Bt genes - Cry 1 AC and Cry 1 EC - and transformed cotton with them, said the Institute had already filed three international patents on the technology, of which two were already granted. Stating that an amount of less than Rs 1 crore was being charged by NBRI for licensing the technology to SBBPL in the interest of nation, he said the details of the royalty would be finalised at a later stage. The Monsanto-Mahyco alliance was estimated to have spent over Rs 50 crore on developing the Bt cotton technology.

Cotton, the leading commercial crop in the country, is currently cultivated in over 9-million hectares in States such as Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. However, the average cotton yield in the country is only 319 kg per hectare compared to the world average of 603 kg/ha.

``It is estimated that insecticides worth Rs 3,000 crore are used annually in Indian agriculture, of which Rs 1,600 crore account for cotton crop and of this, Rs 1,200 crore is spent on the control of bollworms alone. Such high expenditure incurred on bollworm control has dramatically increased the cost of cultivation in cotton and has put a huge dent on the net income of Indian cotton farmers,'' Dr Kumar said.

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