Bowing to pressure from consumers, some farm interests and environmental groups, Monsanto Co. recently announced that it will shelve plans to further develop biotech wheat. According to a news release, Monsanto will "indefinitely delay plans" to introduce its glyphosate-tolerant wheat in the United States and Canada.
Farmers fearing the loss of huge overseas markets such as Japan joined forces with consumer and environmental groups that oppose biotechnology in pressuring Monsanto to halt the introduction of the product. A larger factor, according to Monsanto, was a dwindling market for the wheat.
"As a result of our portfolio review and dialogue with wheat industry leaders, we recognize the business opportunities with Roundup Ready spring wheat are less attractive relative to Monsanto's other commercial priorities," said Carl Casale, executive vice president of Monsanto. "Acreage planted in the spring wheat market in the United States and Canada has declined nearly 25 percent since 1997, and even more in the higher cost weed control market for this product. This technology adds value for only a segment of spring wheat growers, resulting in a lack of widespread wheat industry alignment, unlike the alignment we see in other crops where biotechnology is broadly applied. These factors underscore the difficulty of bringing new technologies to the wheat market at this time."
Casale said Monsanto will continue to monitor the wheat industry's desire for crop improvements to determine when to move forward with a biotech product.
"This decision allows us to defer commercial development of Roundup Ready wheat, in order to align with the potential commercialization of other biotechnology traits in wheat, estimated to be four to eight years in the future," he said.
Monsanto began the technical development stage of Roundup Ready wheat in 1997. Six years of field testing by Monsanto scientists and academic researchers demonstrate that Roundup Ready wheat performs exceptionally well under the most difficult production environments for spring-planted wheat and offers the potential to increase yields by 5 percent to 15 percent.
Monsanto will discontinue breeding and field level research of Roundup Ready wheat. The company will be working with regulators around the world to take appropriate next steps with regard to regulatory submissions. Monsanto's investment in wheat in fiscal year 2004 has been less than $5 million, or less than 1 percent of the company's $500 million research and development budget. Funds budgeted for wheat will be redeployed to other research and development efforts.
Casale said shifting resources away from Roundup Ready wheat enables Monsanto to increase its research emphasis on stress tolerance and several improved health profile vegetable oil traits. Overall, Monsanto's biotechnology research and development focuses on providing new solutions in the areas of yield improvement and stress tolerance, agronomic pest resistance traits, and food and feed improvement traits.
"We have pipeline products like Roundup Ready Flex for cotton and an improved soybean oil for food manufacturers from our conventional breeding program that are moving close to commercialization," said Casale. "We also saw good results in our field trials for drought tolerant corn in 2003, and we will be expanding our field trials in 2004."
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