Industry News

Dr Usha Zehr - Chief technical officer and joint director of research, Mahyco

An expert geneticist, Dr Zehr has been the brain behind the development of Bt brinjal at Mahyco. She serves on a number of boards, including the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation and the Mahyco Research Foundation, and is a member of the technical advisory committee of the consultative group on International Agricultural Research.

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The Indian economy is booming and so is the biotech sector. The country witnessed reasonable growth in biotechnology over the past few years and has the potential to grow significantly in the coming years. The agriculture biotechnology sector has seen growth as a result of the cotton technologies, basic research and diagnostic tools developed, but pharma biotechnology has seen a much stronger growth. Potential for agriculture biotechnology is equally good. Many new products are at their final stages of development and regulatory approvals.

India is ranked among the top 12 biotechnology destinations worldwide and is the third largest in the Asia-Pacific region. The biotechnology sector grew by 21.5 percent in 2010-11 to cross the $4 billion mark, as revealed by an annual survey conducted by BioSpectrum and The Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises (ABLE). It is interesting to note that most of the companies operating in the biotech sector today are largely dominated by private players. The agri-biotech sector has also been dominated by products from the private sector. Given India’s scientific talent pool, resources and basic infrastructure, the opportunity for improving our global potential is big.

Among the various challenges faced by the biotech sector, those related to marketing challenges are critical, which have to be identified and addressed at different levels, to enable smooth flow of products and services to the target audience at the right time and right place. The biggest challenge of developing an agri-biotech product, to be planted in the fields, is the time taken to develop it. India has a stringent regulation in place for biotech products. The current system for product development can take more than 10 years. The introduction of Bollgard and Bollgard II was an excellent learning in terms of what was needed for a biotech product introduction as compared to what we had been doing since the beginning of the seed industry.

The key challenges for the industry are:

•Creating awareness about biotech products, which will include extension activities.

•Tackling misinformation spread due to lack of knowledge or by vested interests.

•Awareness building with various stakeholder groups.

•Understanding the need for use of biotechnology.

•Ensuring that the policy environment facilitating product development processes is efficient.

•Managing farmer expectations with regard to agri-biotech products.

Link: http://biospectrumindia.ciol.com:50080/content/CoverStory/111101114.asp