GM potato in India within six months

India is expected to approve within six months the commercial growing of a genetically modified potato which contains nutrients lacking in the diets of many of the poor, the BBC reported on Wednesday.

The BBC quoted Dr Manju Sharma, head of the Department of Biotechnology, as saying that the potato would be given free to millions of poor children at government schools to try to reduce the problem of malnutrition.

The ‘‘protato’’, as it has become known, is in its final stages of regulatory approval which Sharma said she was very confident of getting.

‘There has been a serious concern that malnutrition is one of the reasons for the blindness, the Vitamin A deficiency, the protein deficiency,’’ she said.The ‘‘protato’’ contains a third more protein than normal and has been created by adding a gene from the Amaranth plant.