India, Oct. 8 -- Somewhere between a farmer's need to survive and a regulator's refusal to decide, an entire shadow economy has taken root across India's cotton belt, one that now covers nearly a quarter of the country's cotton acreage and runs on seed that carries no legal guarantee, no quality check and no recourse when it fails.

A new field study released in New Delhi on Wednesday has put hard numbers to what many cotton farmers have quietly known for seasons: the crop in their fields is often not the one the law recognises. The study, "Unauthorised Cultivation of HTBt Cotton in India: Extent, Drivers & Implications," was conducted by the South Asia Biotechnology Centre with support from the Federation of Seed Industry of India and th...