Our Farmers And Genetic Modification
Lack of of cold chain facilities has acted as a big hindrance to our farmers getting a fair price for their farm produce as these are of a perishable nature. The hardworking farmers live to see the fruits of their labour and monetary investment either going down the drain or are forced to sell them out of distress at a pittance to the sharks who come in between the ultimate consumer and the farmer and make a tidy packet at the cost of our hapless, poor farmers. All we have come across reports of tragic suicides. The sharks who act as intermediaries have all the money and muscle to book spaces in cold storages to the denial of vast number of farmers. In West Bengal in the year 2008, there was a bumper production of potato and the state government was hopelessly underprepared to meet the situation and there were agitations with farmers blocking roads with their bags of potato, demanding cold storage facilities.
Such is the need to create adequate cold storage facilities in our country that a study shows that fruits what is wasted in India, forms the entire fruit production of a European country! In the light of this grim scenario the success achieved by our plant biologists in India is very significant. The discovery of two genes which are responsible for the ripening process of the fruit has enabled them to shut down this process by tweaking these two genes. The National Institute of Plant Genome research have demonstrated that by this process tomatoes could kept fresh with their normal firmness and texture for 45 days! Two plant enzymes and their genes- alph-man and beta-Hex are the ones which are involved in the ripening process.
It is another instance of genetic modification and what would be the impact of the consumption such genetically modified tomatoes have to be carefully studied. There is already a big debate going on as far as the acceptability of genetically modified food in our life and even the scientist are divided in their opinion on this issue. Let us hope with further progress in this area, the humanity would be able to benefit out of this technological breakthrough.
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