India surpasses China as key bio-technology leader in Asia?

This report said that India surpassed China for the first time in the number of hectares planted with genetically-modified crops, mainly cottons.

Can we say that India is a bio-tech leader in Gene-modification research as cliamed by Indian and some western medias ? No way! Those medias apparantly missed up a technology user and a technology researcher.

India may be a bigger user of the bt cotton than China. But almost all of the bt-cotton seeds came from Monsanto, a US comoany.

But fot China, it is a different story. Biocentury Transgene Technology Co Ltd (BTC) and Monsanto, through a joint venture offered Bt technology. BTC, which got the technology from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) that developed the indigenous technology, sold it to more than 30 private and provincial seed companies (Source). BTC here is a Chinese tech company.

China's mastering of the bt-cotton technology determined that Monsanto can only sell seeds in China at much lower price than in India. Monsato charges Rs 900 per 450 gms of Bt cotton seed in India, but as little as Rs 40 for the same quantity in China. Why? China can make it, but India cannot. (Source)

Is India still a key bio-technology leader in Asia? You can get the answer now.