Nobel laureate Richard Roberts says it’s ‘nonsense’ to fear foreign dependence due to genetically modified crop use

Nobel Laureate Sir Richard John Roberts. File

Richard J. Roberts, the 1993 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, on Tuesday (October 27, 2026) dismissed as “nonsense” the idea that Indians adopting genetically modified crops would become dependent on foreign companies. The work can be done in, and owned by, Indian laboratories, he said.

Dr. Roberts was delivering a plenary address at the second Emerging Science, Technology and Innovation Conclave (ESTIC), where scientists and technologists from across India gather over three days at Bharat Mandapam. ESTIC is a replacement for the Indian Science Congress, which was last held in 2023 after disagreements between the Department of Science and Technology and the Indian Science Congress Association.

In his address, he rejected the term ‘genetically modified’ as “very misleading” and referred to such crops throughout as “biotechnologically modified,” or BM, arguing that “every life form on this planet has been genetically modified by evolution.”

Asked about fears that an American corporation such as Monsanto (whose operations were subsumed into that of agrochemicals giant Bayer) could control the seed supply and erode the country’s independence, Dr. Roberts replied: “I think it’s nonsense. You can do improved agriculture here in the labs in India and own everything here in India. You don’t have to go to America or Europe or anywhere else to make CRISPR-modified plants. Anybody can do it. You go to a lab, learn how to do it — maybe it takes you six to eight weeks — and then you can do it. It’s really very straightforward because we’ve come a long way in knowing how to improve crops. But you can own it here in India. You don’t have to go to America or Europe or anywhere else.”

CRISPR is a gene-editing tool in which a guide RNA steers the Cas9 enzyme to a chosen spot in an organism’s DNA, where it cuts, letting scientists alter or insert genes at that site. The foundational CRISPR-Cas9 patents, however, are embroiled in an intellectual property dispute.

GM food crops have a contested history in India. In 2010, then-Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh imposed an indefinite moratorium on Bt brinjal, a genetically-modified variant of the vegetable. This was after years of debate on its safety, the financial impact on farmers, and the implications of foreign ownership of the genetic modification technology. In July 2024, the Supreme Court delivered a split verdict on GM mustard’s environmental release, but unanimously asked the Centre to frame a national policy on GM crops. Golden Rice, engineered in 1999 by Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer to carry a vitamin A precursor in its grain, has also proved divisive.

Indian researchers reported in the peer-reviewed PLOS One journal in 2017 that backcrossing one Golden Rice transgene event into an Indian variety had yielded stunted, low-yielding plants, unfit for cultivation despite their high provitamin A content.

Asked whether Golden Rice could disturb India’s agricultural systems, citing the invasive spread of eucalyptus. Dr. Roberts said “he was not an expert in agriculture,” underlining that “there are people out there who truly are experts, who I guess can probably answer the questions that you have much better than I can.”

India permits Bt cotton for commercial cultivation, but no GM food crop. Although the Department of Biotechnology promotes GM crops, their commercial release needs the Environment Minister’s approval, and the Minister is not bound by the regulator’s recommendation, as the Bt brinjal moratorium showed.

Kavitha Kuruganti, who leads the Coalition for a GM-Free India, has previously argued that the yield claims for GM mustard, which was cleared by a technical body but whose release subsequently stalled, are not supported by the developers’ own data. India needs a biosafety policy rather than a policy on GM crops, she said.

Dr. Roberts framed GM as a question of food and nutritional security. “Food is medicine,” he said, for people who cannot afford supplements or drugs. Crops eaten in developing countries, he argued, never received the breeding investment Western staples did because their farmers could not pay for it. “Golden Rice is not priced above ordinary rice, and several Indian government institutes hold licences for it,” he claimed.

He added that Bt brinjal lifted yields in Bangladesh and that “no problem” had been seen in 35 years of GM food.

Dr. Roberts called Bt cotton a “success in India.” While Bt cotton boosted crop yield, it has since had setbacks. The pink bollworm developed resistance to first-generation Bt cotton by 2008 and to Bollgard-II (a second generation Bt cotton crop) , which carries two toxins, by 2012.

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