SANGSAD BHABAN, Sept 12, 2019 (BSS) –Bt eggplant, a kind of genetically engineered or GMO crop,
which is being widely cultivated in Bangladesh is fully safe food for the people.
“Bt eggplant has been introduced in Bangladesh by inserting a gene from the bacterium Bacillus
thuringiensis (thus the name, Bt) into nine eggplant or brinjal varieties while the consumption of these varieties is not at all harmful for the people,” Agriculture Minister Dr M Abdur Razzaque told this in the House while responding to a query made by opposition BNP lawmaker Rumeen Farhana of Women Seat-50 at the Jatiya Sangsad here today.
The crop has been developed to resist the fruit and shoot borer, a devastating insect whose larvae bore into the stem and fruit of an eggplant. The insects cause up to 80 percent crop loss.
Even in terms of nutrition, there is no difference between the Bt brinjal and other brinjal varieties, the minister said, adding that the long experiment of the particular crop on different animals including fish, poultry, rabbit, goat, rat, buffalo and other animals didn’t found any toxic residual impact of the crop.
In January 2014 Bangladesh was the first country in South Asia to introduce any genetically modified (GM) food crop in the region.