GLYPHOSATE - AGRICULTURE

News: Centre’s restriction on the use of glyphosate 

What's in the news?

       The Union Agriculture Ministry has restricted the use of glyphosate, a widely used herbicide.

       This comes even as the Supreme Court on November 10 is about to take up a plea seeking a ban on all herbicide-tolerant crops, including transgenic hybrid mustard and cotton.

Glyphosate:

       It is a herbicide used to kill weeds.

       Weeds - undesirable plants that compete with crops for nutrients, water and sunlight. Since weeds basically grow at the expense of crops, farmers remove them manually or spray herbicides.

       Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum herbicide that can control a wide range of weeds, whether broadleaf or grassy.

       It is also non-selective, killing most plants. When applied to their leaves, it inhibits the production of a protein ‘5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS)’. This enzyme, produced only by plants and microorganisms, synthesizes aromatic amino acids that are necessary for their growth.

Use in India:

       There are nine glyphosate-based formulations containing different concentrations of the chemical registered for use under the Insecticides Act, 1968.

       These are approved largely for weed control in tea gardens and non-crop areas such as railway tracks or playgrounds.

       Farmers also apply glyphosate on irrigation channels and bunds to clear these of weeds, making it easier for water to flow and to walk through them.

       Weeds growing on bunds are, moreover, hosts for fungi, such as those causing sheath blight disease in rice.

What exactly has the Government now done?

       The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, on October 21, issued a notification stating that “the use of glyphosate involves health hazards and risk to human beings and animals”.

       It has, however, not banned and only “restricted” its use. The spraying of glyphosate and its derivatives shall henceforth only be permitted through “pest control operators”. 

Why has this been done?

       The scope for glyphosate is already restricted in normal agricultural crops by virtue of it being a non-selective herbicide. Glyphosate application has increased only with the advent of genetic modification (GM) or transgenic technology.

       In this case, it has involved incorporating a ‘cp4-epsps’ gene, isolated from a soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens, into crop plants such as cotton, maize and soybean. This alien gene codes for a protein that does not allow glyphosate to bind with the EPSPS enzyme. The said GM crop can, therefore, “tolerate” the spraying of the herbicide, which then kills only the weeds.

       In 2019 alone, some 81.5 million hectares were planted worldwide with herbicide-tolerant (HT) GM crops. The global glyphosate market is annually worth $9.3 billion, with over 45 per cent of use on account of GM crops

Health concerns over glyphosate:

       The World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), in March 2015, classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”.