Business Potential for Agricultural Biotechnology - Asian Productivity ...

Business Potential for Agricultural Biotechnology Products
roll virus, are likely to be introduced in the near term, contributing to the growth worldwide in
transgenic crops engineered for improved host plant resistance (Monsanto, 1998).
Although 17 countries are reported to have grown biotech crops in 2004, a larger number
are known to have such crops in various stages of development leading up to commercial plantings.
Of these 17 countries, 11 are developing countries. Indeed, Cohen (2005) has suggested
that the public sector will be an important source of crop biotech products for poor farmers, as
there are currently known to be more than 99 crop variety-trait modifications undergoing different
stages of testing by public institutions in Asia .
Estimates of Market Potential
One way to provide a global perspective of the status of biotech crops is to characterize the
global adoption rates as a percentage of the respective global areas of the four principal crops—
soybean, cotton, canola, and maize—in which biotech technology is utilized (Table 2). The data
indicate that in 2004, 56% of the 86 million ha of soybean planted globally were biotech, up
from 55% in 2003, despite an increase in the global area of soybean from 76 million ha in 2003
to 86 million ha in 2004. Of the 32 million ha of cotton, 28% or 9.0 million ha were planted to
biotech cotton in 2004. The area planted to biotech canola, expressed on a percentage basis,
increased from 16% in 2003 to 19% or 4.3 million ha of the 23 million ha of canola planted
globally in 2004. Similarly, of the 143 million ha of maize planted in 2004, 14% was planted to
biotech maize, up significantly from 11% in 2003. Thus, the global adoption rates for all four
biotech crops—soybeans, maize, cotton, and canola—all increased significantly between 2003
and 2004. If the global areas (conventional and biotech) of these four crops are aggregated, the
total area is 284 million ha, of which 29%, were biotech, up significantly from 25% in 2003.
Two-thirds of these 284 million ha are in the developing countries, farmed mainly by millions of
small, resource-poor farmers, where yields are lower, constraints are greater, and the need for
improved production of food, feed, and fiber crops is the greatest.
In 2004, the global market value of biotech crops, forecasted by Cropnosis, was USD4.70
billion, representing 15% of the USD32.5 billion global crop protection market in 2003 and 16%
of the USD30 billion global commercial seed market (James, 2004). The market value of the
global biotech crop market is based on the sale price of biotech seed plus any technology fees
that apply. The accumulated global value for the nine-year period 1996 to 2004 (biotech crops
were first commercialized in 1996), is USD24 billion (Table 2). The global value of the biotech
crop market is projected at more than USD5 billion for 2005. These figures do not take into
account any potential release of seed produced by the public sector through government sources.
As the ADB (2001) has shown, there is a significant pipeline of products undergoing regulatory
approval in many Asian countries.
Taking all factors into account, the outlook for 2010 points to continued growth in the
global area of biotech crops, up to 150 million ha, with up to 15 million farmers growing biotech
crops in up to 30 countries.
LAB TO MARKET PROCESSES IN COMMERCIALIZATION
Product Development
It is obvious that there is much ongoing research in Asia using recombinant DNA technology
to produce genetically engineered plants with improved traits (Asian Development Bank,
2001). Much of this research, unfortunately, may not lead to commercialized products or products
available to farmers on a large scale, largely because the work has been “technology
pushed” rather than demand driven. In commercial product development, it is important to first
conduct the market analysis of demand before any initial proof of concept research is done.
There are many steps needed to commercialize a crop biotech product from product
concept to market product, and the time required ranges from 10 to 13 years. The individual
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