Law :

During our iGEM experience, we had to contact lawmakers and assess what they were thinking about our project. For that, we contacted the FSSAI, the Food Safety and Standard Authority in India, and we had a quick reply from Dr. A. K. Sharma, the consultant of the FSSAI on the behalf of the Chairperson and CEO of FSSAI. He advised us to make sure we chose the right microorganisms so they can survive and work together, along with the use of critical genes for the vitamins pathways. For the law, he said that there is currently no authorisation for GMO microorganisms in the Indian Food regulation and if we want to have our product in India, the safety needs to be established.

Sunita Grover, the principal scientist and head of the Dairy Microbiology Division at the National Dairy Research Institute replied us when we presented our project. She was surprised and really enthusiastic towards our project because malnutrition is a serious problem in India and many children suffer from it. She advised us to use food grade vector system to make sure our product is safe for consumption and to reduce issues arising form the use of genetically modified bacteria. Again, she showed her concerns about the compatibility of the different species living in fermentation batter and how we need to make sure they can live alltogether. To finish, her major concern is safety. According to Sunita Grover, our project needs to undergo phase I and II trials, to assess safety and scientifically proven health benefits.

Finally, we had the chance to interview Samir K. Brahmachari, the former director of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in India. He participated to our first workshop during the NightScience and we met him again at the 2nd Annual Open Source Pharma Conference in Frankfurt, Germany. Regarding the law, there is no GM microorganisms that are allowed because of the use of antibiotic markers that makes them unsafe to eat. But if we can add a safe vitamin pathway on already eaten bacteria (lactic bacteria for example) that will be sterilized but producing enough vitamin to fortify the food, it should be possible. For him, regulatory issues can undergo changes. Concerning the GMO debate in Europe and India, the main points are different: in India, people don't want GMO to be associated with farmers, they don't want them to be dependant and no one want a monopoly of a particular plant. This issues doesn't apply to our project for Samir Brahmachari, but labelling would be an problem: the use of our product only depends of people wish. If people find it beneficial and safe, they would take it. To continue, an accelerated evolution can be more acceptable for a project like ours for the GMO regulation. Also, since our project doesn't imply a big company producing and giving a product, it is more likely to work and be more accepted, as well as the way we want to implement it (give power to people, let them have their own "mini-lab" and produce their bacteria and yeast for their consumption) according to him.

Indian Citizen Acceptance :

Because the law is not the only element we needed to consider for our project, we decided to build a survey on the food habits of Indian citizens, to understand what they eat the most and when, how they cook, how often the food varies, how they see our idea, would they try it, etc. This survey take an important place in the Human practices, because collecting information on the field is essential, to understand people’s acceptance toward our project, and to find ways of introducing this project into their daily life without disrupting their tradition and culture.

Alice trip to India :

In order to get in touch with Indian populationd, we shared our survey with an ex- iGEMer (Alice LEBOEDEC from the 2014 INSA­Lyon team) who went in the end of July in South India. She helped us gather information by assissting people to fill it so our team would benefit from this survey and shape our project along with people preferences. Not only Alice brought few survey filled by inhabitant of a small village, but she also took for us few samples of idli batter, curd (fermented milk), rice, lentils and condiments for us to analyze. Among the farmers that filled the survey, we could see that everyone eats rice daily with vegetables as a side dish, while fish and meat are eaten once or twice a week. The people she interviewed were really enthusiatic towards our project and they would try the modified microorganisms that make food more nutritious. You can see below the photos of the Idli preparation and the batter.

Online survey :

The same survey was designed online to allow us to have more point of view and information about Indian Citizen food habits. With the help of the different Indian iGEM teams (IIT_Madras, ISER_Pune, IIT_Delhi, IIT_Kharagpur, SVCE_Chennai) that shared our online survey trough India, we could extract interesting information quite important for us (most of the person that answered this survey are students). For example, we could see that almost every person that filled the survey eats Idli daily (see Graphic 1). This information is crucial, since Idli is one of the dishe we selected for the addition of the vitamin-producing bacteria. Because a large amount of people eat this dishe daily, it is certainly the best to chose to reduce deficiencies.


The most eaten ingredient are definitely rice and dal (Graphic 2), the two basic elements we find in most dishes in India (Curd rice, Sambar rice, Lemon rice, Idli, Dosa, etc). On their own, they are not sufficient to meet the needs of the human body in vitamins, it is important to have a balanced diet, but not everyone has access to a variety of food.
Fermented dishes such as Idli or Dosa are not always eaten under constraints, it is noteworthy to see that when we asked people if they ate this two food and why, they replied they liked the taste, smoothness and their special consistence.



When asked if they would try our idea of adding vitamin-producing bacteria, most of the people said they would try it, as long as it is safe and proven efficient.