"It turned out to be the right choice."

"In this lab, we test, if organic cotton comes from a genetically modified organism (GMO) or not. We test the leaves of the plant during the growing season, and now during harvest times, we test the cotton fibers directly. In organic farming, you are not allowed to use genetically modified seeds and farmers know it. But all, really all the conventional farmers here use GMO cotton seeds. Their seeds or genetic material can get into the neighboring fields of organic farmers by accident. And as organic cotton has to be free from GMO this is actually quite a big problem for organic farmers. The cotton of each of the more than 3,000 organic cotton farmers in this region has to pass this test. So you can tell it is quite a lot of work.

I am the head of the lab here. I grew to love this job. Initially, this wasn’t really my dream job. I studied biotechnology and wanted to work in a lab, yes, but rather medicinal labs doing blood testing. I hadn’t thought about crops or cotton in particular. But I wanted to live close to my family and this region is very rural so there are not really a lot of lab jobs around. At that time BioRe was looking for someone to be in charge of the lab, so I took the job here. And it turned out to be the right choice. Cotton started fascinating me, the interactions of the seeds, soil and environment.

I also got interested in organic farming. My grandparents were farmers and ever since they retired their land was not used any longer, as both of my parents have office jobs. The more I learned about organic farming, the more I wanted to try it myself. So I started my own small farm on the fields of my grandparents. Now it grew to be a family project, my grandparents give their advice, they still know a lot about farming and I can bring in new know-how about organic farming. And even my parents started helping on the fields and are enjoying the food that I grow there. On these fields, I also grow cotton - 100% organic with no contamination."

Monika Madhusudan Kanungo is 25 years old and lives in Khargone. She works in a laboratory of Remei India Ltd since 2018 to ensure non-genetically modified seed production. She sometimes assists in the soil testing lab for SysCom.

More portraits and link

• fibl.org: Faces of Organic Cotton
• remei-india.com: Remei India