Syngenta pulls out of research collaboration with IGAU

Stung by criticism, the seed giant Syngenta India Limited has pulled out of the controversial research collaboration with the Indira Gandhi Agricultural University in Raipur, a company official said on Tuesday.

Pawan Malik, president of seeds division of Syngenta said the discussions with IGAU were inconclusive and the proposal has been dropped.

"We are very disappointed to see the misleading and false accusations that were made (against the collaboration)," he said.

The collaboration would have given the company commercial rights to over 19,000 strains of local rice cultivars held by the university.

The rice varieties had been painstakingly gathered by the agricultural scientist R H Richharia in the 1970s. In exchange, IGAU would have received an undisclosed amount of money and royalties from Syngenta.

Environmentalists and some scientists opposed the deal on the ground that Richharia's collection is a national wealth and not private property of the university and that opening the database to a multinational company is a 'sellout.'