India's Efforts towards Building Climate Resilience in Agriculture through Genome Editing

India is playing an increasingly important role in global discussions on climate action and sustainability, including at the recent G7 Summit held in Canada on June 16-17, 2025.

- Prof. KC Bansal

Building resilience in agriculture has been identified as one of the six thematic areas under India's recently launched BIOE3 policy, which emphasises biotechnology-driven solutions for environmental sustainability, economic growth, and enhanced resilience. This article underscores the pivotal role of genome editing technologies in developing climate-resilient crop varieties, offering sustainable solutions to the challenges posed by climate change.

Agriculture forms the backbone of India's economy, providing livelihoods to nearly half of its population and contributing significantly to GDP, food security, and rural employment. Despite achieving self-sufficiency in food grain production, Indian agriculture remains highly vulnerable to the growing threats posed by climate change. The increasing frequency of heatwaves, floods, droughts, and unpredictable weather patterns has amplified risks to both productivity and income stability, particularly for small and marginal farmers.

As Indian agriculture remains predominantly smallholder-driven and heavily dependent on the monsoon, it is particularly vulnerable to climate variability. This necessitates the need for innovative solutions like genome editing to develop climate-resilient, high-yielding, and resource-use-efficient crop varieties.

Over the past decades, India has taken significant steps toward building climate-resilient agriculture. The launch of the National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) in 2011 was a milestone in this direction. Under NICRA, several stress-tolerant varieties resilient to drought, floods, pests, and diseases of rice, maize, mung bean, tomato, and lentil were developed through conventional methods of breeding. These initiatives have helped farmers mitigate some risks associated with climate change.