Business Potential for Agricultural Biotechnology - Asian Productivity ...

Commercialization of Agricultural Crop Biotechnology Products
maize in 2004 (2.0 million ha) and the increase of Bt cotton (1.4 million ha) in China, India, and
Australia. Whereas most of the growth in Bt maize occurred in the U.S., significant increases in
Bt maize area also occurred in Argentina, Canada, South Africa, Spain, and the Philippines. The
stacked traits of herbicide tolerance and insect resistance in both maize and cotton increased by
17% in 2004, reflecting the needs of farmers who must simultaneously address the multiple yield
constraints associated with various biotic stresses. This trend will continue and intensify as more
traits become available to farmers and is an important feature of the technology.
Seeds conferring protection against insect pests and pathogens were among the first wave
of biotechnology products; genetically modified crops possessing traits which confer tolerance
to herbicides, resistance to insects using Bt endotoxins, and virus resistance are the most common
traits. All these contain “transgenes.” Over the last three years, there have been dramatic
and continuing increases in the area planted to transgenic crops. The adoption rates for transgenic
crops are the highest for new technologies by agricultural industry standards (Table 2).
The U.S. alone accounted for 74% of the area planted to transgenics. Argentina and China are
the only developing countries with significant transgenic plantings. Total transgenic crop sales
grew more than sixfold, from USD235 million in 1996 to USD1.2–1.5 billion in 1998. The
market is projected to increase to USD3 billion or more in the year 2000, to USD6 billion in
2005, and to USD20 billion in 2010 as more crops and more traits are introduced (James, 2004).
Table 2. Global Value of the iotech
Crop Market, 1996–2004
Year
Value
(USD million)
1996 115
1997 842
1998 1,973
1999 2,703
2000 2,734
2001 3,235
2002 3,656
2003 4,152
2004* 4,663
Total
*Forecast
24,073
Source: Cropnosis 2004 (personal
communication) (James, 2004)
The principal transgenic crops, in descending order of area, were soybean, maize, tobacco,
cotton, and rapeseed/canola (James, 2004). The dominant transgenic crops and traits in 2004
were herbicide-tolerant soybean, Bt corn, insect resistant/herbicide-tolerant cotton, herbicidetolerant
canola, and herbicide-tolerant corn (James, 2004). Overall, the largest proportion of
transgenic crops are those which possess the trait of tolerance to a herbicide. Many other traits
have been engineered into crop cultivars for improved resistance to pests by both the private and
the public sectors. For rice, transgenic plants have been developed with resistance to stemborers
(Bt gene), resistance to pathogens (sheath blight, bacterial blight, tungro viruses, ragged stunt
virus), tolerance to herbicides, and tolerance to drought, salinity, and submergence (ADB, 2001;
Cohen, 2005).
The product pipeline for a major company like Monsanto shows that crop protection traits
like combined resistances to Colorado potato beetle and potato virus Y, tolerance to potato leaf-
– 73 –