Despite having unleashed more than 780 Bt cotton hybrids in India during the last decade, yields have turned stagnant and farmer suicides in the cotton belt are multiplying.

In fact, although Bt cotton now covers more than 90 per cent of the total cotton growing area in the country, yields in the last five years have gone up marginally from 470 kg per ha to 481 kg per ha though input costs have increased several fold, warned member NGOs of the Coalition for GM-Free India.