One of the challenges in the future is to produce more foodstuffs in limited land for feed production. The next challenge is to upgrade feed ingredients though genetic modification and lastly to enhance the utilization of feed through innovative feed additives. So how do we produce more food for feed or in other words increase crop productivity? There is no way to produce the quantities of feed needed for the rapidly increasing demand using conventional methods of cross breeding etc with limited tillable land available. India is a tropical country and there is tremendous loss of crops due to diseases. In order to control diseases a lot of herbicides and pesticides are being used. This usage in the last two decades led to green revolution when India entered from a food shortage status to a self sufficiency status. Over the years usage of pesticides and herbicides has led to several resistant varieties. Rampant use of chemical fertilizers to improve soil nutrients has also reached its limitation in terms of productivity. Recently farmers are beginning to use biopesticides and biofertilisers but still their usage has not caught on due to inconsistent results and the cost efficiency when compared to chemicals. In the face of a proven slow down in the productivity gains from the green revolution, biotechnology or gene revolution is by default, our best, and may be, only way to increase production to meet future food needs. Hence India needs high yielding varieties of cereals and oilseeds, which would need minimum irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides to meet feed requirements for its growing livestock population (Qaim and Ziberman., 2003)
The common feed sources in poultry for meeting energy requirements are cereal grains like maize, sorghum, wheat, rice and millets. Certain by products like rice bran, wheat bran, molasses, and mango kernel meal are used. Fat and oils are also used as energy sources. The protein source used in Indian feed is mainly soybean meal, sunflower meal, peanut meal, cotton seed meal and to a lesser extent rapeseed meal, coconut meal, sesame meal, palm kernel meal, safflower meal etc. Apart from these protein sources animal protein sources like fishmeal and meat meal are also used.
The sources for the cattle feed is mainly deoiled rice bran, cottonseed meal, groundnut meal and bagasse. The aqua feed mainly consists of wheat, soybean meal, ground nut meal, deoiled rice bran and fishmeal.
Given the above feed sources it is to be seen how India can focus its attention in two areas, one is the development of genetically modified feed ingredients in order to nutritionally enhance and improve the production capabilities. The second area is to improve certain feed ingredients which have inherently low nutritional capabilities like high fiber, anti-nutritive factors, low protein, and deficiency of certain amino acids through the addition of feed additives. The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) has been actively encouraging various Research Institutes in India to produce genetically modified plants. Transgenics of rice, mustard and cotton would complete field assessment and some of them would be ready for large-scale seed production by 2005. Apart from the Indian institutes several multinationals like Monsanto, Syngenta etc have come to India and through their R & D have come up with genetically modified plant varieties.
Although India approved sale of its first GM crop in March 2002, there is lot of apprehension in the introduction of genetically modified crops. One needs to see its effect on health and environment and the economical repercussions of the introduction of terminator gene. The ultimate goal is to allow farmers to grow more and better crops for less money. These are the questions, which would need careful evaluation and justification before the technology is introduced. Developed countries like United States and Canada are already using most of the GM crops and recently developing countries like Argentina, China, Indonesia, and Mexico etc have also introduced. According to USDA data, of the total acreage under soybean in USA, 70 % is accounted for GM soybean and 90 % of the total cotton plant acreage with GM varieties. Cultivation of GM crops is increasing very rapidly around the world from 3.7 million acres in 1996 to the figure of 145.0 million acres in 2002 (Figure 1 & 2) Europe has at the present banned GM crops for human use due to lack of research into the impacts on animal and human health and environment. Widespread consumer concerns have forced major supermarkets and food manufacturers to eliminate GM ingredients from human food but GM crops continue to be fed on a large scale to farm animals. Europe does not have the same kind of pressures that a developing country faces and hence can afford to wait. But countries like India and Brazil would have to adapt GM technology very soon since the pressure is to achieve higher productivity and better quality, including improved nutrition and storage properties. Hence in the coming decade a revolutionary change in India could be taking place both in feed sources and feed additives.
