But the warnings were
never taken seriously, even when resistance issues were pointed out, Kranthi wrote.
Keshav Kranthi, the principle scientist who led that team, when I interviewed him in February 2016.
The much-touted technology[Bt-cotton or BG-I and its second generation BG-II]
has broken down,” Kranthi told me in 2016.
Kranthi says Bt-cotton in India should have
been released in open pollinated varieties(or straight-line desi cotton), not in hybrids.
Kranthi said in an article in 2016 in Cotton Statistics and News,
a publication of the Cotton Association of India.
But farmers will now
find the worms surviving in Bt-cotton fields, Kranthi wrote in a series of essays in industry magazines
and on his own CICR blog.
It was also a hint, as Kranthi had feared,
that the American bollworm(so named because of its antecedents) might also eventually return(though so far, it hasn't).
The best long-term strategy for India is to grow short-duration Bt-cotton hybrids or
varieties that don't last beyond January,” Kranthi had told this reporter in 2016.