ICAR rejects ‘motivated, baseless’ charges over genome-edited rice

THE Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has dismissed allegations made by independent researchers that scientific evidence contradicts ICAR’s assertions about a major increase in rice production following the introduction of two gene-edited rice varieties earlier this year. Researchers under the banner of the Coalition for a GM-Free India had alleged that ICAR and the Ministry of Agriculture were misled into making exaggerated claims about the success of genome-edited rice.

- JITENDRA CHOUBEY @New Delhi

Citing publicly available data from the Annual Progress Reports (2023 and 2024) of ICAR’s All India Coordinated Research Project on Rice (AICRPR), the Coalition said most experimental results showed the gene-edited varieties performed poorly. They accused ICAR of selectively reporting data to inflate performance outcomes.