Cotton

BT Cotton : India Makes Rapid Progress 

Bt-cotton was first planted in India in 2002. Following its success, the area under this crop and the number of farmers who adopted this technology increased significantly from year to year. Thus, in about 6 years, the area under Bt-cotton has increased by more than 210 times to record 6.2 m ha and the number of Bt-farmers by 190 times to reach 4.1 m in 2008. Further, Bt-cotton has occupied 66% of the 9.8 m ha of the total cotton area in India in 2008.

Bt-cotton has so far been commercialized in 9 countries – the USA (first introduced in 1996), Mexico (1996), Australia (1996), China (1997), Argentina (1998), South Africa (1998), Colombia (2002), India (2002) and Brazil (2005). India occupied the first position in terms of area(6.2 million hectares) occupied followed by China with 3.8 m ha. In the U.S., the planting of cotton declined from six million hectares in 2006 to 4.4 million hectares in 2007, the lowest since 1989.

Maharashtra topped in the area under Bt cotton (2.8 million hectares), followed by Andhra Pradesh (1.19 million), Gujarat (0.81 million), Madhya Pradesh (0.50 million) North Zone (Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan) (0.59 million), Karnataka (0.14 million), and Tamil Nadu (0.07 million).