New Delhi, May 7 -- What if the next big leap in farming wasn't a machine or a chemical but a smarter grain of rice? India's latest breakthrough may look ordinary, but it could change everything.

In a quiet yet powerful shift, India has just taken the lead in agricultural innovation in rice with the launch of two genome-edited rice varieties Kamala and Pusa DST Rice 1. They may look like any other grain of rice, but beneath the surface, they hold the potential to change the way the world grows food.

These aren't genetically modified organisms in the traditional sense. There's no foreign DNA involved. Instead, scientists from the Indian Institute of Rice Research and the Indian Agricultural Research Institute used precision tools to twea...