After cotton farmers, it is, according to this story, the turn of tobacco and potato growers to reap benefits from biotechnology. Two months ago Centre had allowed farmers to grow a genetically modified variety of cotton that is bollworm-attack resistant.

Now plant biologists at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai, using a technique called "coat protein mediated protection,," have, the story says, created tobacco plants that are resistant to its deadliest enemy-a virus called "potato virus Y" or PVY.

The tiny helical shaped virus got this name because it also infects potato, "causing 30 to 40 per cent crop loss and even some times total crop failure," according to V A Bapat one of the BARC biotechnologists involved in the project.

The story says that the work by Bapat and his colleagues S B Ghosh, L H S Nagi, T R Ganapathi and S M Paul Khurana reported in Current Science may eventually enable Indian farmers cultivate PVY resistant potato and tobacco. Their work is still in laboratory stage. The virus causes heavy damage to these crops in other parts of the world also, and scientists there have already developed PVY resistant transgenic potato and tobacco, says Bapat. But the transgenic varieties developed in Europe and America "are most unlikely to succeed in India" since agroclimatic situations are entirely different, the scientists said.

In India, potato is grown as a short day winter crop whereas in Europe and the United States it is grown as a long day summer crop.