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Biotech companies develop genetically engineered crops for certain characteristics or traits, usually for properties that farmers desire. Two types of GE plants make up nearly all of the GE crops currently on the market: one type is crops engineered for insect resistance (IR), and the other is crops that can tolerate direct spraying of toxic pesticides (called herbicide tolerant, or HT crops). These two traits are also the most common in field trials.
HT crops make up about 70% of all GE crop acreage in the U.S. These include Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" (RR) crops, including RR soy, corn, cotton and canola. Roundup is an herbicide that will kill natural crops, but farmers can spray Roundup directly on RR plants. The crop will survive but nearby weeds will be killed.
Most IR crops are also called "Bt" crops becaus they contain a gene from a bacteria, Bacillus thuringiensis, that is known to be toxic to certain insects. These plants are pesticides: they contain a pesticide that you cannot wash off. Bt corn and cotton are widely grown in the U.S.
Other GE Traits that companies are pursuing include viral, fungal, and bacteria resistance so crops can survive plant diseases. There are also "product qualities" that companies are attempting to engineer into certain crops. For example, apples may be engineered for delayed ripening, or coffee for low-caffeine.
How to Read the Field Trial Key Charts
Date
For each field trial we've listed the beginning and ending dates for the specific crop. The date range may include a series of successive field trials by the same company, or intermittent trials by different companies. The date sometimes goes beyond 2003 because some slower growing crops (for example, tree crops like walnuts) are in field trials that are intended to last several years. The date is an important indication of the prospects for commercial sales of a crop: more recent, successive, and numerous trials are an indication that a crop is closer to our supermarkets.
GE Trait
GE Trait means the characteristic the biotech companies are hoping to achieve in the genetically engineered plant. In the chart of each field trial we've abbreviated the most often sought after traits as follows:
HT - herbicide tolerance
IR - insect resistance (most IR crops are also called "Bt" crops)
VR - virus resistance BR - bacterial resistance FR - fungal resistance
PQ - product quality
Developer
The Developer is the biotech company or other institution responsible for conducting the GE crop field trial. Government agencies and Universities also conduct field trials, sometimes in cooperation with industry. These experiments are often a direct example of corporate welfare, where our tax dollars are used to fund research that ends up in the hands of industry (for example, see information about USDA's role in developing "terminator technology" at www.rafi.org).
For more on individual biotech companies, see "Biotech Industry" (link to page).
Location
The country or countries in which field trials occur.
Some countries release more information than others,
and some may not have any information on tests at all.
Thus, this list is not comprehensive, but includes
much of the publicly available information on GE
field tests worldwide. For research into further
information on field trials, see the following web sites:
Field trials in the U.S.
http://www.nbiap.vt.edu/cfdocs/fieldtests1.cfm
Field trials in Europe
http://www.olis.oecd.org/biotrack.nsf/by+organism
http://biotech.jrc.it/dbplants.asp
Field trials internationally
http://www.nbiap.vt.edu/cfdocs/globalfieldtest.cfm
http://binas.unido.org/binas/trials.php3
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