Biosafety Aspects of Genetically Modified Crops

*Ashutosh Kumar, Banshidhar, Priyanka Jaiswal and Harmeet Singh Janeja*

### **Abstract**

With the advancement in the field of agricultural biotechnology, many genetically modified crops like Bt- cotton, Bt- brinjal have been developed and commercialised to fulfil the need of the world population. Several biosafety concerns viz., risk to human health, risk to environment, ecological concern o has been raised after the rapid commercialization of GM crops every year across the world. As per Convention on biodiversity (CBD), Biosafety is a term used to describe efforts to reduce and eliminate the potential risk resulting from biotechnology and its product. Though many concerns being raised time to time, strict biosafety guideline must be followed before introducing a GM crop in public domain especially in resource poor developing countries.

**Keywords:** biosafety, GMO, Bt-cotton, CBD, health risk

#### **1. Introduction**

GM crops are one of the noble invention of 21st century that holds a good promise for better survival of humanity. These crops are developed through genetic engineering by altering the genetic make-up of the crops for enriching it with one or several economically important traits such as improved quality traits, reduction in anti-nutritional factors, herbicide tolerance, resistance to various biotic and abiotic stresses, etc. The GM crops have helped mankind to stand against various challenges arising out of high population growth, biodiversity loss and climate change but the process following which these crops have been developed may posed serious threat to the biodiversity which serve as the repository of raw materials for various biotechnological applications ranging from improved and processed foods, fibres and fuels, noble medicines and drugs, enzymes, etc. thus it is imperative that the biodiversity must be preserved satisfactorily to fully exploit the potential of this indispensable technology. In recent times, Biotechnological tool such as genetic engineering and recombinant DNA technology has proved its worth in achieving the sustainable development goals and enjoyed a great potential to mitigate the impact of climate change as well and opened new avenues for climate smart agriculture. However, while doing so we must take care of the ultimate stakeholder whether for the biodiversity or the technology i.e. the human beings and its environment. Fulfilling all these contradictory demands concurrently requires an elaborative and exhaustive framework involving robust protocols regarding safe designing, production, handling and transfer of GM crops. Keeping this in view, a series of meeting were held internationally to discuss the possible innovation or strategies to reduce the ill-effects of these technological interventions and to develop effective strategies for conservation and preservation of biological resources. One of the practical outcome of these discussion fruits in form of "The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, 2000" [1, 2].
