The state Agriculture department has confirmed that the Bt cotton which was sold and grown in several places of Gujarat has also been sold to farmers in some districts of Maharashtra by Nav Bharat Seeds Ltd, an Ahmedabad based company having office in Jalna district of Maharashtra.
A senior official of the department said that we had sent several samples of cotton seeds of the variety Navbharat 151 collected from different places in Maharashtra to Central Institute of Cotton Research (CICR), Nagpur. The report which we have received this week has confirmed that the seeds were Genetically Modified (GM) cotton seeds and they were sold to the farmers without their knowledge, he added. The seeds were mainly sold to the farmers of Vidarbha and some districts of Marathwada including Nagpur, Akola, Jalgaon, Jalna, Buldhana etc. The farmers who purchased these seeds were unaware that the seeds sold to them were GM seeds i.e. transgenic variety, he said. Bureau Report