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India adores a technological milestone, especially when it promises bumper harvests and national pride. So when the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the Union Agriculture Ministry announced India’s “first-ever gene-edited rice varieties” earlier this year, it was sold as a moment of triumph—a marriage of science, climate resilience, and self-reliance.
Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Shivraj Singh Chouhan unveiled DRR Dhan 100 (Kamala) and Pusa DST Rice 1, declaring India “the first country in the world to develop genome-edited rice.” The government’s press release claimed these varieties would deliver 20-30% higher yield, mature 15-20 days earlier, use less fertiliser and water, and cut methane emissions by one-fifth—an agricultural miracle in the age of climate stress.
Headlines echoed the celebration. “India’s new gene-edited rice to boost yields by 30%,” read one newspaper. “A second Green Revolution,” said another.
But the data behind the claims tell a very different story.
Gene editing sounds clean and futuristic: molecular scissors like CRISPR snip and tweak a plant’s own DNA without adding foreign genes, we are told. In truth, foreign genetic material is often used during gene editing and may remain in the plant's DNA. It is sold as “precision breeding”, but precision doesn’t mean predictable. Unintended genetic changes and trait distortions are common. That’s why international agencies – from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) – insist on case-by-case risk assessment and full transparency before release.
India, however, decided to take a faster route. In 2022, the government relaxed biosafety rules for many gene-edited plants, classifying them as “non-GM” (not Genetically Modified) and exempting them from environmental risk assessments, biosafety evaluations, and food safety reviews. The shortcut was meant to fast-track innovation.
It also created the conditions for a story destined to collapse under its own hype.
According to the Coalition for a GM-Free India – a public watchdog on India’s GMO and biosafety policies – which examined ICAR’s own All India Coordinated Research Project on Rice (AICRPR) reports for 2023 and 2024, the so-called breakthroughs don’t stand up to scrutiny — not even by ICAR’s own yardstick. The findings were made public at a press conference on October 30, 2025.
Take Pusa DST Rice-1, claimed to deliver up to 30% yield advantage under stress conditions like salinity and alkalinity. The 2023 report itself says “sufficient quantity of seeds… for trait evaluation were not available”—meaning drought and salt tolerance were never tested. Even in ordinary yield trials, the variety performed worse than its parent, MTU 1010, in 12 of 20 sites, with an overall mean 4.8% lower yield. Yet ICAR highlighted only the remaining eight favourable sites to proclaim a 30% jump.
DRR Dhan 100 (Kamala) follows the same pattern. In 2023, it underperformed in eight of 19 trial sites and lagged behind its parent, a widely preferred variety, BPT5204, in two key agro-climatic zones (south and east). Gains were minor and inconsistent. In 2024, the analysis explicitly notes that data from “a few locations differed significantly… they were excluded.” The final claim of a 17% yield advantage was based on just six locations. When all data are considered, the overall mean yield was actually 4% lower.
Equally shaky are the claims of “20 days earlier maturity” and “better nitrogen-use efficiency”—traits unsupported by published data and, in some cases, missing entirely.
As the Coalition stated, “This is not a case of minor oversight. It is a pattern of data omission and selective presentation, a scientific fraud rigged to manufacture false claims of success.” The group accused ICAR of “selective data use” and “misleading the government and the public.”
The essence of their charge is simple: ICAR’s own documents don’t support ICAR’s own claims.
ICAR quickly responded. In a note to the media, it called the allegations “baseless and motivated by an anti-development agenda.” It insisted that both varieties had been tested at “more than 24 locations,” that the trials were “blind-coded”, followed “all norms,” and that all data were “available online.” This was also widely covered by the media.
But the defence never addressed the core contradictions. It didn’t explain why key trait data were missing, why entire trial locations were dropped from the final analysis, or how claimed yield gains were derived from uneven results.
It leaned on institutional authority. The idea that because ICAR ran the trials, the science must be sound. Yet the first rule of science is transparency; trust follows. As the Coalition rightly said, “Doing bad science in agriculture is not just malpractice; it’s a violation of public trust.”
Around the world, governments are still debating how to regulate gene-edited crops. The European Union continues to treat them on par with conventional GMOs. New Zealand is inching toward deregulation. Only three gene-edited crops have been approved worldwide — two in the US and one in Japan, all with public data-sharing requirements. As of today, there’s no global consensus, and the direction the matter is going is politically driven as much as scientifically argued.
The FAO’s 2023 technical review on Gene Editing and Food Safety calls for case-by-case assessment, transparency, documentation, and national risk-assessment capacity. Meanwhile, global agriculture policy watchdogs GRAIN and the ETC Group warn that deregulation and opacity concentrate power in corporate seed markets and erode farmer choice. Without full disclosure and independent scrutiny, the public won’t be able to discern innovation from salesmanship.
India’s experiment has now become a cautionary tale. By sidestepping scrutiny and claiming a success story even before the science had settled, the country has traded scientific rigour for political theatre. As Kavitha Kuruganti, Convenor of the Coalition, asked pointedly at the press meet, “How can the jumla culture be allowed to enter the scientific arena?”
Science thrives in sunlight. Even if gene editing ultimately proves useful, science by headline is a dangerous habit. When institutions announce breakthroughs before peer-reviewed data are public and independently verified, the line between research and propaganda blurs. The temptation to please political masters, to chase “first in the world” titles, or to claim quick climate solutions can easily distort scientific integrity.
If India wants to lead in agri-biotech, it must first learn to lead in scientific integrity and transparency. That means publishing full, site-wise data, inviting independent audits, and opening the conversation to farmers, consumers, and civil society. Resist the urge to declare victory before the evidence matures.
The ICAR episode isn’t just about rice or gene editing. It’s about how public science operates in a democracy.
India has the scientists and the institutions to do this right. What we need is a cultural reset: from spotlight to sunlight, from hype to truth.
When public science takes shortcuts and bends evidence to fit the headline, it doesn’t just distort truth—it breaks trust. And when truth and trust become casualties of progress, the harvest will always be bitter.
Sridhar Radhakrishnan writes on development and policy related to the environment, agriculture and climate. He is in the Steering Committee of the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture. Views expressed here are the author’s own.