Indian farmers are set to plant the world's first gene-edited rice variety, Pusa DST Rice 1, this winter through the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) collaboration with US-based Corteva. According to reports from The Hindu BusinessLine, ICAR is expected to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) this month with Corteva, which holds the license for the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology. The agreement will pave the way for commercial release of the variety developed by ICAR's New Delhi-based Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI).
IARI has prepared approximately 2 tonnes of Pusa DST Rice 1, sufficient for starting seed multiplication in the upcoming rabi season with transplanting around November. As reported by The Hindu BusinessLine, Pusa DST Rice 1 is derived from MTU1010, which is suitable for rabi season in southern states. The variety exhibits superior performance with an average yield of 2493, 3508, and 3731 kg/ha under different conditions, significantly outperforming MTU 1010's yield of 1912 kg/ha under coastal salinity stress.
ICAR has received 2 of the 3 approvals required to sign the MoU with Corteva, including one from the Ministry of External Affairs. According to The Hindu BusinessLine, the final approval is pending before the agreement can be finalized. ICAR recommends Pusa DST Rice 1 can be grown across 15 states: Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. The variety was developed by editing the SDNI mutant of Drought and Salt Tolerance (DST) gene and tested in multilocation field trials during 2023 and 2024.
The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has achieved a significant milestone in pulse research by developing India's first fully annotated telomere-to-telomere (T2T) reference genome of pigeonpea variety 'Asha'. According to The Hindu BusinessLine, the breakthrough builds on ICAR's pioneering work in pigeonpea genomics, with the institute publishing the world's first draft genome of pigeonpea in 2011 and an improved version in 2017. The newly developed T2T genome sequence contains 752.65 million base pairs of DNA assembled into 92 contigs, providing a complete representation of all 11 chromosomes of pigeonpea. The genome assembly, designated NIPB_CcT2T_4, has been deposited in the global database (NCBI) under accession number GCF_000230855.1 and was released on April 20, 2026.
Before the MoU signing, Corteva has secured a long-term humanitarian licensing agreement with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). As reported by The Hindu BusinessLine, ICRISAT announced on August 3 that it has secured long-term access to CRISPR-Cas9 technology to deploy gene editing across smallholder Asian and African farms. The Government of India has launched the Mission for 'Aatmanirbharta in Pulses' (2025-26 to 2030-31) to achieve self-sufficiency in pulse production, with the mission aiming to increase pulse production to about 35 million tonnes by 2030-31. The comprehensive genome annotation identified 36,557 genes and 48,008 mRNAs, with transcriptome mapping recording more than 99.9% read alignment, confirming the high accuracy and completeness of the pigeonpea genome.
