The recent granting of a Precision Bred Organism (PBO) marketing notice for a gene-edited variety of barley to Rothamsted Research has made us reflect over 30 years of debate, discussions, strong opinions and scientific discovery which have led to the current development.
Monitoring global trends
There’s nothing like an annual report to give a good overview of the direction of travel. The recently published “Global Status of Commercialised Biotech/GM Crops in 2024”, was launched in February by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) which, for the last three decades, has provided insights into the global adoption of this technology.
The latest report has revealed that since 1996, 73 countries have integrated genetically modified (GM) crops into their agricultural systems – 44 through cultivation and 29 through imports.
What is clear is that despite set-backs and regulatory hurdles, there has been a global gaining of momentum, not least with the development of gene-editing technologies, first developed in 2012. The latest ISAAA findings highlight not just continued global adoption, but also an evolution in how this technology is used.
Early adoption – narrow but deep
When GM crops were first commercialised in 1996, farmer adoption was relatively modest—just 1.7 million hectares across a handful of countries. But early ISAAA reports documented a rapid surge.
In just four years global GM crop area had reached 44 million hectares, and by the mid-2000s, adoption had increased more than forty-fold.
This rapid uptake allegedly gave GM crops the status of fastest adopted technology in the history of modern agriculture.
Early growth, however, was geographically narrow and mapped mainly to countries with enabling regulatory jurisdictions. The United States, Canada, Argentina and China dominated production, and so-called “industrialised nations” accounted for the vast majority of cultivated area.
The technology was largely focused on a few key crops—soybean, maize and cotton—and on two primary traits: herbicide tolerance and insect resistance.
