Biotech Crop Roundup
Stars -- And Failures -- in the Field of Genetically Modified Crops

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Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" soybeans are engineered to resist the widely used herbicide Roundup. Crops survive in fields sprayed with Roundup, but weeds are killed. Photo: Courtesy of Monsanto

Corn and soybeans are the main bioengineered crops currently used in the food supply, but private companies, universities and nonprofit organizations are working on a host of crops they hope to introduce to the world's commercial agriculture production. Read about some of the most hopeful projects, and those already out of the running:



• Golden rice, the poster child for the potential of genetic engineering, was designed to provide the world's poor with a more nutritious rice. Swiss scientists engineered the rice to contain beta-carotene, which the human body turns into vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency is the scourge of Asia and Africa, causing death and blindness in hundreds of thousands of children every year. But will the poor eat the rice? Some speculate they may shun the yellow-tinted rice for its stigma as food for poor people. Golden rice is still a work in progress, and may not make it to market for another decade.

• Monsanto inserted a gene known as Bt into corn, cotton and potatoes. The gene produces a toxin that kills several important insect pests. So called "Bt crops" are in use throughout the United States.

• Monsanto also created a line of genetically modified crops called "Roundup Ready." Plants such as canola, cotton, corn and soybeans have been altered to resist the popular herbicide Roundup. When the herbicide is sprayed on a field planted with Roundup Ready seeds, the crop isn't harmed, but weeds are killed.

• The sweet potato is a staple crop throughout Africa and Asia, but provides little protein. So researchers at Tuskegee University introduced a gene into the plant that boosts protein production. The preliminary results: a plant with five times the usual protein content.

• Calgene engineered a tomato, dubbed the Flavr Savr, with a gene that extended the shelf life of tomatoes. But the luscious, red tomatoes failed commercially when they entered the market in 1994: The inserted gene's benefits were negated by the complications of growing and transporting the tomatoes.

• A variety of nonprofit organizations, universities and private companies are at work on creating potatoes that would be resistant to fungi -- like the late blight that caused the Great Potato Famine in Ireland -- and viruses.