The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

136 the world according to monsantoexcited young men as economically irresponsible oddballs. At the sametime, the “Kremlin,” as the company management, located in D Building,was called, had broken with company habits and for the first time in its historyplunged headlong into basic research without knowing what applicationsit would lead to. “Scientific excellence was the priority,” according toRob Horsch. “There was no pressure to produce a product. For example, wewere working on petunias. No one came and said to us: ‘Petunias? What doyou think we are? A university?’ In fact, we were a kind of entrepreneurialunit protected by the management.” 8Following the lead of laboratories in California, Belgium, and Germany,the Uphoria researchers developed a three-stage research program: first, tomanipulate DNA to extract genes that might be useful, known as “genes ofinterest”; next, to transfer those genes into plant cells; and finally, to developtissue cultures in order to reproduce and encourage the growth of these manipulatedembryonic cells. The first stage was worked out thanks to thediscovery of restriction enzymes, which functioned like scissors, enablingmolecular biologists to cut DNA to extract genes of interest.But the second stage was another story. Contrary to the argument oftenput forth by promoters of biotechnology, the techniques of genetic manipulationhave absolutely nothing to do with the genealogical selection that hasbeen practiced by breeders since the work of Louis de Vilmorin in the midnineteenthcentury. Seed companies have merely rationalized and systematizedthe ancestral practices of farmers who, since the advent of agriculturein Mesopotamia ten thousand years ago, have endeavored to keep the bestgrains from their harvests to seed their fields the following year. The contributionof professional breeders is to cause the cross-breeding of twoplants—the “parents” of the line—selected for complementary agronomicqualities (such as resistance to disease or crop yield), in the hope that theirdescendants will preserve the same characteristics because of the laws ofheredity. The best examples from the second generation are then selectedand forced to cross-breed, and so on over several generations. It is clear thatgenealogical selection is based on natural laws, in this case the sexual reproductionof plant organisms; human action is aimed only at orienting therange of possibilities within a single genetic reservoir, but in the end the “improved”plant might very well have been created by Mother Nature in thefields. I will return to the effects of genealogical selection on biodiversity inChapter Eleven, but for now, it is important to understand that this agro-