India has overtaken Canada to emerge as the fourth largest country to grow biotech or genetically modified (GM) crops in 2013 as farmers here planted Bt cotton in about 11 million hectares.
In the previous year, farmers in India had planted Bt cotton — the only approved GM crop for commercial cultivation in about 10.8 m ha.
The global acreages under GM crops continued to expand through 2013, albeit at a sluggish pace of around 3 per cent. Acreage under GM crops increased to 175.2 million hectares in 2013, about five million hectares more than last year, according to the International Service for Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA) that tracks the GM acreages.
