Even before the debate on the safety regime on genetically modified (GM) food crops has been settled in India, there are new challenges with GM fruits in the pipeline. This time it is with the banana, supposedly modified at the genetic level in the laboratories of Australia and being shipped to India.

Australian Connection

The Australian Queensland University of Technology (QUT) signed a deal with the Indian Government's Department of Biotechnology in August 2012 which is to run for six years. Professor James Dale, Director of the Centre for Tropical Crops and Biocommodities, heads the project at QUT. As per the planned first phase of the project, the technology is being transferred from Australia to the five Indian partner institutes: the National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute in Mohali, Punjab; the National Research Centre for Bananas (NRCB) at Tiruchirappalli; Indian Institute of Horticultural Research at Bengaluru Rural District; the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Trombay, Mumbai, and the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University's Centre for Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Coimbatore. Ironically, NRCB has one of Asia’s largest field genebanks with 340 indigenous accessions of banana. In stage two, the training of Indian scientists will be undertaken.

Africa Angle

Before shipping GM technology to India, the Australian team has already reached out to East Africa, and particularly Uganda. Ugandan researchers at the Kawanda Research Institute are involved in a Uganda National Banana Research Programme (UNBRP).

This programme is funded by several international donors, including the Rockefeller Foundation. It was reported that the newly developed wilt-resistant crops would be distributed throughout East Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo free of charge to farmers. As in India, Uganda does not have a fully functioning biosafety regime.

Versions of the proposed National Biotechnology and Biosafety Bill have been tabled in the Ugandan Parliament since 2008. The law is nowhere near the African Union's Model Law on Biosafety.

US Agenda

In December 2011, the biotech industry propaganda body – ISAAA (International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications) reported that a $7.07-million grant was given by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID/Uganda) to Cornell University for research on the Matoke banana. The grant is managed by the Agricultural Biotechnology Research Project (ABSP II) in Cornell. The project is to run from August 2011 to August 2016.

It is focused on the Matoke – a GM East African Highland (EAH) banana, which is one of Uganda's primary food staples, apparently feeding more than half of the population. Aside from its good nutritional value, it is also a source of income for most Ugandan farmers. However, most Matoke varieties are sterile and do not produce seeds. This works well for the biotech businesses, also they use the sterility as an argument for treating the GM product as safe.

In 2009, at the G8 Summit in L’Aquila, Italy, US President Barack Obama had announced a US Government initiative, Feed the Future (FTF). This is led by USAID. Through the GM banana project, ABSP II aims to build the biotech capacity of Uganda's National Agricultural Research Organisation .

Now to close the circle, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) has been supporting Professor Dale and his team at QUT since 2005. The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), headquartered in Nigeria, held the first Pan-African Banana Conference in 2008. The Conference was funded by BMGF.

So is it mere coincidence that these new GM varieties of the fruit are aimed at countries such as Uganda, which eats the maximum bananas in the world and then India, which grows the largest number of bananas for domestic consumption? And is this only an Oz-India story?

(The author is a lawyer and researcher)

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