For the crop protection and crop production industries this is the Age of Biology. An age in which the seed industry indisputably plays a critical role. Any doubts about the potential return on investment in the seed industry must have been well and truly dispelled. While crop protection chemicals will continue to produce important revenue for most of the major international companies, genetics and biotechnology will provide the engine for growth.

The international seed industry is highly sophisticated. Global breeding programmes integrate different sources of elite germplasm and biotech traits to produce new hybrids and varieties which can be adapted to local conditions. Elite germplasm remains the foundation of plant breeding, but the new tool-box of biotechnology provides the means to characterise and use it more effectively. Breeding cycles can be reduced, allowing new products to be developed more quickly and with greater confidence.

The past decade has seen the growth of GM crops, from their introduction in 1996 to 90 million hectares managed by 8.5 million farmers in 21 countries in 2005. The technology has been embraced by farmers in the US, Argentina and Brazil wanting to improve and facilitate weed control in soybeans, and it has helped cotton growers in Australia, China and India to reduce insecticide applications and control key cotton pests, for example.

There is still consumer opposition to GM crops, and their usage in food products, and reluctance in most countries to approve planting of food crops, such as rice and wheat. The scorecard is definitely mixed. However, GM crops will continue to expand in existing markets and there are signs that pressures are building to use the powerful technology of genetic engineering to increase the rate of progress in agricultural productivity in other countries.