Cameroon is poised to become the tenth country to grow GMO cotton–a cotton variety modified to express the natural insecticide, the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis. Bt has a long history of safe use going back to the 1930s.
Cotton used to be protected from insects by repeated pesticide applications. Bt cotton has enabled farmers to dramatically reduce pesticide use. Bt produces a large variety of toxins expressed from single genes that are very specific for certain insect pests, most notably the larvae of moths and butterflies, beetles, cotton bollworms and flies, but is harmless to other forms of life, including humans. Bt is especially effective at targeting caterpillars, which bore into cotton bolls reducing yield and compromising quality. This spares natural insect predators in the farm ecology and further contributes to noninsecticide pest management.
Bt cotton is currently grown commercially in the United States, Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, China, India, Australia, and Indonesia and Colombia.
Société de développement du coton (Sodecoton) says it is on track to develop test plants with plans to commercially introduce the crop in 2017. Unlike the first phase, which began in 2012 and has been done indoors, the agro-industrial cotton company says it will be conducting field tests with GMOs.
The GMO strain currently tested by Sodecton has proven more robust against herbicides and more resistant to diseases, enabling significantly higher yields. But more evaluations need to be done.
“We’re far from the stage of widespread cultivation,” said the Managing Director of Sodecton, Abdou namba. “The government, via legislation governing this area, has put restrictions in place to prevent breaches. Further experimentation will be necessary to ensure that it is safe for the environment and not a danger to the other varieties of cotton.”
More than half of the world’s cotton is currently grown using GMO Bt technology. Since adopting Bt cotton early this century, India has emerged as the number one global exporter of cotton and the second largest cotton producer in the world. Cameroon is hoping it can slice off a piece of growing world market
