The First Decade of Crop Biotechnology

Reproduction of this publication for educational or other non-commercial purposes is authorized without prior permission from the copyright holder, provided the source is properly acknowledged. Reproduction for resale or other commercial purposes is prohibited without the prior written permission from the copyright holder. The international scientific and development community now recognizes that doubling or tripling of world food, feed and fiber production by the year 2050 to meet the needs of an 11 billion global population cannot be achieved without biotechnology. Genetic engineering of crops has been a controversial subject since 1971 when the first genetically modified organisms were developed. Concern about biosafety has led to Government regulation of transgenic crops in contained and field experiments to assess potential risk before the genetically engineered crops are approved for commercialization. The first field trials of transgenic crops featured herbicide resistance, used as a marker gene in tobacco in the USA and France in 1986. In the interim period, more than 3,500 field trials of transgenic crops have been conducted on more than 15,000 individual sites, in 34 countries with at least 56 crops, mostly in North America and the European Union. 91% of the trials have been conducted in industrialized countries, 1% in Eastern Europe and Rus-sia and the balance of 8% in the developing countries with most in Latin America and the Caribbean, only 2% in the developing countries of Asia, almost exclusively in China, and very few in Africa, almost all in South Africa. The majority of the trials have been conducted in the China was the first country to commercialize transgenics in the early 1990s with the introduction of virus resistant tobacco, and later a virus resistant tomato. The first approval for commercial sale of a genetically modified product for food use in an industrialized country was in the USA in May 1994 when Calgene marketed its Flavr-Savr™ delayed ripening tomato. By year-end 1995, 35 applications or petitions had been granted to commercially grow 9 transgenic crops, involving 8 traits in 6 countries plus the European Union, with most approvals in the USA (20) and Canada (8) which together account for 80% of the number of approvals worldwide. An additional 11 limited approvals by 3 countries have been granted for use of a product from a transgenic crop for food and/or feed use or for breeding or import. Another 28 applications are pending in 4 countries, seeking approval …