HYDERABAD - Looking at the ongoing tussle between the farmers and the seed companies over spurious seeds, the Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR), Nagpur, has developed a Bt detection kit which will cost Rs 1,300. The institute is in contact with farmers' associations through local coordinators for selling the kits.

The kit involves a simple procedure wherein a 'Cry1Ac Bt instant check strip' with a purple colour band is dipped in a little extraction of a seed. If one band develops halfway through the strip along with another at the top (two bands), it indicates the presence of Cry1Ac protein in the sample. Thus, the Bt cotton sample with the particular gene is tested positive or negative.

All India Crop Biotech Association executive director RK Sinha said now farmers in different mandals could make use of the kit free of cost. Mr Sinha said though India had the largest area in the world under cotton cultivation - 22.5 million acres - it remained third in terms of total cotton production.

The institute has developed three kits for testing the expression of various Bt toxins in plants. These kits help in quality assurance during transgenic seed production and large-scale screening of plants to assess the expression of gene. Cry I Ac (crystal-toxin 1Ac), Cry 1Ab or Cry 1Aa proteins are also being expressed in transgenic crop plant developed for insect pest management.