A New Era For Indian Rice: Climate-Resilient & Genome-Edited
India’s recent release of two climate-resilient, genome-edited rice varieties, therefore, marks an important milestone.
Published : November 19, 2025 at 2:59 PM IST
Hyderabad: Rice is not just another crop. It is the staple food for more than half the world’s population. Across Asia, it is deeply woven into our diets, cultures, and livelihoods. For billions, especially in developing countries, rice means food security, income, and survival. As the climate becomes harsher with rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, and soil degradation, protecting rice production is not an option; rather, it is a necessity.
India’s recent release of two climate-resilient, genome-edited rice varieties, therefore, marks an important milestone. It signals not only scientific progress but also hope for sustainable farming and food security in the years to come.
Major milestone for India
Two new rice varieties, DRR Dhan 100 (Kamala), developed by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Indian Institute of Rice Research (ICAR-IIRR) in Hyderabad, and Pusa DST Rice 1, from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (ICAR-IARI) in New Delhi, have been created using genome editing (GE), a modern breeding tool. These varieties are designed to handle drought and salinity, mature faster, and use water more efficiently. DRR Dhan 100, for example, ripens 20 days earlier than its parent variety, Samba Mahsuri, and yields up to 19% more grain.
Pusa DST Rice 1 performs exceptionally well in salty and alkaline soils, showing yield gains of 10–30%. Together, they could help save an estimated 7,500 million cubic metres of irrigation water, a crucial benefit in a country where agriculture consumes over 80% of available freshwater. Undoubtedly, these achievements by Indian agricultural scientists in the ICAR system are quite impressive. But the real story is the technology that made them possible, i.e., genome editing (GE).
What is Genome Editing (GE)?
For decades, scientists have improved crops by crossing plants with desirable traits. It has been a time-consuming process that sometimes may take as long as 10–15 years. Later came genetic modification (GM), where genes from one organism are inserted into another. GM crops helped farmers in many ways, but they also sparked debates about safety and ethics, mainly because they involved “foreign genes”.
GE is quite different from GM, although they may appear to be similar, especially when we are not clear. GE allows scientists to make precise, targeted changes within a plant’s own DNA, without adding genes from other species. It is like correcting a typo in a massive book. The book remains the same; only a ‘small error’ is fixed.
Among the available tools, CRISPR-Cas9 has become the most famous and widely used. Discovered just over a decade ago by Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020, CRISPR-Cas9 works like a pair of molecular scissors guided by a GPS. A short piece of RNA guides the Cas9 enzyme to the exact spot in the DNA that needs to be changed, and the enzyme cuts it. The cell’s natural repair system then makes the correction or desired change. This technology allows scientists to make crops stronger against drought, pests, or diseases and even improve nutrition. Believe that all these can happen with remarkable speed and accuracy. Importantly, these crops do not contain foreign DNA, which makes them easier to accept scientifically and socially.
Why GE matters for farmers, consumers
Genome editing offers many advantages for both farmers and the environment. It can 1) reduce the need for pesticides and fertilisers, lowering costs and pollution; 2) help crops survive heat, drought, and salinity (all these are increasing threats due to climate change); 3) enhance nutritional quality and shelf life, reducing food waste; and 4) speed up breeding programmes, helping scientists respond faster (just in a couple of years) to new challenges.
For India, where smallholder farmers form the backbone of agriculture, such innovations could be game-changing. If properly used, genome editing can support the government’s vision of “Atmanirbhar Bharat” (self-reliant India) by making crops more resilient and ensuring stable harvests even in difficult conditions.
Challenge of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
The main CRISPR-Cas9 patents are held by a few institutions in the United States, including the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley. These patents are managed by companies like ERS Genomics, which was founded by Charpentier and has held the CRISPR licence in India since 2022.
While Indian scientists can freely use CRISPR for research, commercialising any product (like selling seeds) usually requires expensive licences. The ICAR and its commercialisation arm, AgrInnovate India Limited, are now negotiating to secure a national licence so that the technology can be used widely in Indian agriculture.
The issue is important because high licensing fees could make the technology costly and limit its use to large companies, leaving smallholder farmers behind. This concern is not hypothetical. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) could not obtain licences for developing a CRISPR-based cure for sickle-cell disease because of prohibitive costs. As a result, Indian scientists in the CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) built our own CRISPR systems to make such effective treatments affordable.
On ‘Janyatiya Guarav Divas’, the 19th November, CSIR-IGIB is exchanging the licensing agreement with Serum Institute of India Pvt Ltd for the transfer of an indigenously developed CRISPR-based gene editing therapy for the treatment of sickle cell disease. Agricultural scientists in ICAR, SAUs or other labs may need to emulate this by creating indigenous, open-access genome-editing tools that are affordable and freely available for use for Indian requirements.
In fact, it would be more prudent if all the funding agencies like ICAR, UGC, DBT, DST, and CSIR put up an integrated approach with concerted efforts on such aspects that deplete both our energies and resources, and celebrate ‘Jai Anusandhan’ for Atmabirbhar Bharat.
Finding the right balance
India must walk a careful path, encouraging innovation while protecting farmers’ rights and national interests. A few steps can make a big difference: The government could adopt a “One Nation, One License” policy, negotiating a single, affordable license for all public-sector research.
Public investment should focus on developing indigenous genome-editing technologies like the one developed by CSIR-IGIB to reduce dependence on foreign patents.
Regulations that clearly distinguish genome-edited crops (which do not contain foreign DNA) from genetically modified (GM) crops must be widely publicised, facilitating faster approvals and accelerating public acceptance.
Farmers and consumers need to be educated about how genome editing works and how it differs from GM; transparency will build trust.
Science, openness, and courage
Some critics fear unintended effects or environmental risks. The Coalition for GM-Free India called the release of these GE rice varieties a “hasty promotion of untested, underperforming and unsafe varieties, camouflaged in hype around a so-called global breakthrough, [which] is nothing but an attempt to bypass public resistance to risky gene technologies in India’s food systems.” The group raised concerns about the use of CRISPR-Cas9, highlighting its foreign origins and the risk of India becoming dependent on multinational corporations (MNC) for seed rights. These are genuine concerns and must be addressed through rigorous testing and independent evaluation. But it is equally important to remember that no technology is perfect on day one. Progress takes time. The mobile phones, computers, or cars we use today are vastly improved versions of their early models. It was possible because society gave innovation a chance to grow and evolve. Science advances when we explore responsibly, not when we resist change. Farmers themselves are capable of deciding whether new rice varieties work for them. If the new varieties perform well, they’ll stay; if not, they’ll naturally disappear from the fields.
What India needs is confidence in its scientific institutions and the courage to take bold but informed steps toward the future. The release of genome-edited rice is not just about two new varieties; it’s about opening doors to a new generation of climate-smart agriculture that can feed a growing population while protecting the planet.
By investing in research, encouraging openness, and ensuring equitable access, India can make genome editing a tool for empowerment, not dependence, helping farmers thrive, conserving resources, and securing our nation’s food future.
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of ETV Bharat)
(Author is a former vice chancellor and JC Bose Fellow, University of Hyderabad, an Institution of Eminence)
