Emerging technologies are rapidly transforming how we understand and manipulate biological systems. Take for example, personalised medicine: as our understanding of disease at the molecular level improves, we become better able to design treatments targeted to the underlying cause rather than relying on one-size-fits-all solutions. Agriculture is likely to move in a similar direction. As knowledge of plant biology deepens, and as we gain a more precise understanding of how fertilisers, biostimulants, and pesticides interact with crops and local conditions, agricultural inputs are also likely to become more targeted and context-specific.
Two broad trends are likely to drive this shift. First, there is growing recognition that the continued heavy use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides carries significant environmental costs and can deepen dependence on imported inputs. Second, advances in biotechnology and related sciences are giving us greater control over how biological systems can be managed and improved. Gene editing will make it possible to develop crop traits tailored to narrow agronomic needs. Precision agriculture tools will make it easier to vary inputs by geography, weather, and crop stage. Together, these developments will push Indian agriculture into a new technological phase. Yet India’s regulatory system remains largely designed for an earlier era.
For decades, agriculture has been governed through distinct categories. Biopesticides, biostimulants, biofertilisers and gene-edited plants are regulated through separate channels, often under different laws, ministries, committees and evidentiary standards. Each input is assessed separately, approved separately, and sold separately. This made sense in a world where agricultural productivity was driven by adding more of a few standardised inputs, particularly chemicals, to the field. But agriculture is now shifting to a more chemical-free and natural methods. The use of technologies to design chemical-free inputs would be the next step as organic farming and sourcing local produce becomes more prevalent.
Crucially, this next wave of farm technology is not going to be about one miracle seed or one better spray. It will be about combinations. A gene-edited crop may perform best only when paired with a microbial biofertiliser. A pest-resistant variety may reduce chemical pesticide use only when combined with a specific biopesticide protocol. A crop designed to thrive under heat or drought stress may need a tailored package of biological inputs to deliver its promise in the field. Further, governance has to account for the impact of the local conditions on the input and crop dynamics. A rice-growing district in eastern India has different soil, rainfall, pest pressure and nutrient conditions from a cotton belt in Maharashtra or a vegetable cluster in Karnataka.
This shift to agriculture led by science and environment requires moving away from a product-led regulatory model to a package-led one. That means approving not just individual technologies, but defined crop-region combinations: a particular gene-edited crop, paired with a particular set of bio-inputs, for a particular agro-climatic zone. This approach would be better in three ways.
First, it would be more scientific. Agriculture in India is too diverse for blanket assumptions. A biological input that works well in one state may fail in another. A gene-edited crop that reduces fertiliser use in irrigated regions may not do so in rainfed ones. Package-led approvals would allow regulators to recognise this diversity instead of ignoring it.
Second, it would be better for innovation. Right now, developers of new agricultural systems face a maze of separate approvals, with no clear integrated pathway for technologies meant to work together. That slows down innovation precisely where India needs it most: at the interface of seed science, microbial inputs, and local agronomy. A package-led system would not weaken regulation; it would make it fit for the technologies that are actually emerging. Third, it would be better for public policy. India is trying to achieve several goals at once: maintain yields, reduce input costs, improve soil health, lower chemical dependence, and build resilience to climate stress. Those goals will not be achieved by governing seeds, fertilisers, and pesticides as if they exist in separate universes. They will be achieved by enabling combinations that work in practice.
India has a chance to lead here. It already has strong public agricultural research institutions, growing interest in biologicals, and an expanding conversation around gene editing. But if governance remains stuck in an old input-by-input mindset, innovation will outrun regulation and the most useful combinations may never reach farmers. The old rulebook assumed that agriculture could be governed one input at a time. The next phase of farming will make that increasingly untenable. As technology becomes more targeted, more biological, and more context-specific, governance will have to follow. The future of agriculture, like the future of healthcare, will be more personalised. India’s regulatory system should start preparing for that now.
Author’s note: AI was used in helping with the structural flow of this blog.