Bt Brinjal

Introduction

It was made possible by the Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project II at Cornell University, which was funded by the United States Agency for International Development, to transfer the Bt brinjal event (“EE-1”) to the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), where it was introduced into several locally and commercially popular open-pollinated brinjal varieties (Shelton et al., 2018). BARI conducted seven years of greenhouse and confined field trials in diverse geographical locations around Bangladesh to evaluate the efficacy and environmental safety of the nine Bt cultivars that were developed. Four of the nine Bt cultivars were subsequently certified for cultivation by Bangladesh’s National Committee on Biosafety (NCB) in October 2013. The other three were rejected. It was announced that four new BT varieties have been issued, and they are designated by the names Uttara, Nayantara, Kazla, and ISD006. These varieties are Bt isolines of Uttara, Nayantara, and ISD006, respectively (Shelton et al., 2018). They are referred to as Bt brinjal-1, Bt brinjal-2, Bt brinjal-4, and Bt brinjal-4, respectively, in this research.

Open-pollinated Bt cultivars such as these four are available, allowing farmers to conserve seed for future plantings. Farmers, on the other hand, are discouraged from reusing conserved seed for several seasons due to the possibility of outcrossing to other kinds, particularly non-Bt brinjal types that are planted in border rows as part of a resistance management approach. As a result of approval, the government distributed Bt brinjal seeds to 20 selected farmers across four districts for growing in 2014. The government entrusted BARI staff with the responsibility of providing farmers with training, guidance, and monitoring on crop management in 2014. Since 2014, there has been a significant increase in the use of Bt brinjal. Farmers now obtain their seed from three different Bangladeshi organisations: the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), and the Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation (BADC), with seed distributed for free, with the exception of a small charge (US $0.10 per gramme, equal to 8 Bangladesh Taka (BDT) local currency) if seed is obtained from the BADC. Brinjal with Bt was grown by 20,695 farmers on 1,213.3 hectares in 2018–9, accounting for roughly 2.5 percent of the total crop.

Conclusion 

These findings imply that Bt brinjal has a number of major advantages, and they emphasise the necessity of making the technology available in a greater number of varieties that are appropriate for local conditions and consumer preferences. Additional research is needed to confirm these findings and to investigate in greater depth the elements that influence the decisions made by farmers and consumers regarding Bt brinjal, among other things.