GM crops to account for half the world's cotton production

22 Jun '05

4 min read

India, the world's third-largest cotton-grower, planted 550,000 hectares (1.36 million acres) of biotech crops last year, up 460 percent from a year earlier, Rabobank said.

Monsanto
Some estimates indicate that this area may officially double in 2005-06 to 1 million hectares and, coupled with a higher proportion of better performing seeds, there is talk of India surpassing U.S. production in the near future to become the second-largest cotton producer globally behind China,'' the bank said.

St. Louis-based Monsanto, the world's biggest developer of genetically modified crops, said May 19 that it expects to sell enough biotech cotton in India to plant 2.5 million acres, double last year's sales.

Monsanto's Bollgard seeds contain a protein from a soil microbe called Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, that protects the crop from bollworms.

``Bollgard II technology offers cotton growers efficient, effective pest control with fewer pesticide applications than in conventional cotton crops,'' Monsanto said on its Web site.

The annual sales of companies providing biotechnology to farmers increased 15 percent to $4.7 billion last year, the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications has said.

U.S., China
In the U.S., 54 percent of cotton crops were planted with gene-altered seeds, according to Rabobank. The proportion rises to 76 percent in China and 80 percent in Australia.

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