AGRICULTURE consumes 70 per cent of all freshwa ter and more than 40 per cent of the planet's solid surface. The world population of 6.8 billion is projected to reach more than nine billion by mid century. The possibilities of increased acreage for food production are quite dim. All this simply means that we have to produce more on the same or fewer hectares. We have to use more efficient and sustainable technologies. In this critical scenario, agriculture biotechnology (agribiotech) is expected to play a big role. An Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore emeritus professor rightly said: "Nobody seems to be against a technology-based solutions to stagnating productivity in agriculture in the face of projected increase in human population". The question, however, is how to integrate biotechnology with agriculture system responsibly and purposefully?

India has strong agriculture base. It contributes to 18 per cent of GDP and supports 52 per cent of our workforce.

Agriculture is supposed to cater the needs of more than 17 per cent of humans and 13 per cent of world's cattle. But India has only 2.3 per cent of world's land and 4.2 per cent of world's water.

We need to strengthen significantly our agriculture base.

According to BiospectrumABLE Industry survey 2010, agribiotech grew at 37 per cent in FY 2009-10 with a total segment turn over of Rs 1,936 crore, accounting for almost 14 per cent the total biotech revenues. The segment is projected to grow at an average of 26 per cent in the next five years. India has almost 8.4 million hectares of area under Bt cotton; over 30 companies are marketing Bt cotton seeds in India.

The future of agribiotech was discussed in an international forum. The discussion, where international experts participated, was moderated by Scientific American. The issues are universal: increasing population, increasing food demand, how to grow more (50 per cent more than what we are producing today in 25 years) with less (less pesticide, less water, etc), climate change, market and regulatory environment. Fresh water and top soil are major worries. One way is to have "more crop from every drop". We want crops that have much better water-utilisation efficiency. We need to develop crops with greater tolerance to drought-like conditions, by breeding or genetically. The benefits are expected from the dissemination and adoption of conservation tillage and reduced tillage methods. Drought tolerance, nitrogenuse efficiency, and herbicide-tol erant crops shall continue to get priority among scientists.

Bioinformatics will play a major role to improve agricultural productivity.

Another issue is the role of complimentary technologies (for example, information technology) on the sustainability. One industry representative suggested a three pronged approach to double the yield of the crops (like corn, soybean and cotton): gene insertion for trait improvement, DNA markerassisted breeding to enhance and improve the yield, and `precision' agriculture based on remote sensing and global positioning (planting the right seed in the right place depending on the field conditions or having the precise application of pesticides, nitrogen fertiliser or other inputs). The economic side of the sustainability issue has been a disturbing fac tor for a lot of people; balance, they believe, is tilted towards seed producers and rich farmers whereas the interest of marginal farmers is neglected.

"Certainly we're all profit-making companies and we need to make money on what we produce, but I don't think it's disproportionately shared at all" is how an industry representative responded.

The data says that more than 13 million farmers planted biotech crops in 2008, and out of these 12 million were small-scale farmers.

It seems the solution lies in affecting changes both at the technological as well as at the social level.

We have recently seen gathering of "dark clouds over Bt brinjal".

We like to see dark clouds but for other reasons. The writer is a biotechnologist and ED, Birla Institute of Scientific Research, Jaipur