Monsanto announced Monday (May 10) that it is discontinuing development of Roundup Ready wheat, its genetically modified (GM) herbicide-resistant wheat. Instead of going forward with the commercialization of the wheat strains, developed with the help of the federal government's Agriculture Canada, Monsanto said it would monitor the progress other biotech companies make in developing traits that would make GM wheat more commercially viable.

“We'll be looking for progress in disease-resistant traits, stress tolerance traits—the list goes on and on,” Monsanto Canada spokesperson Trish Jordon told The Scientist. Jordon said it might take between 4 and 8 years before research yields results that would warrant another look at GM wheat. “Until there is a first trait on the market, we won't initiate work on a second trait. Maybe somebody else will be treated differently than we were treated as a company,” she said.

Monsanto was not treated gently, as various activist groups mobilized to halt the introduction of GM wheat. One group, the Council of Canadians, initiated an Internet campaign in which thousands of people sent slices of bread to members of Parliament and the prime minister. “When you send something to the prime minter's office or to Parliament, it's free” said Madge Adams, the council's coordinator of the campaign.

The forces against GM wheat in Canada became even stronger with the opposition beginning in May 2003 of the Canadian Wheat Board, the farmer–government cooperative organization that is the sole exporter of Canadian wheat. With the move by Monsanto, “we have averted disaster,” says Patty Rosher, senior program manager in product development for the Wheat Board. “The introduction of GMO wheat was one of the most serious risks that the wheat industry faced in Canada.” The board received threats that Canada's major overseas customers would not buy any Canadian wheat at all “if GMO strains were being grown in unconfined conditions,” Rosher said.

The move by Monsanto comes less than a month after a California agency rejected an application from Ventria Biosciences to grown 120 acres of GM rice.

Depending on the year, Canada ranks second or third in the world in wheat exports, with about 15 million tons per year of overseas sales. The Wheat Board maintains that most sales would be endangered if importing countries suspected that GMO grains “contaminate” Canadian exports.

Rosher also cited a University of Manitoba study that indicates that the costs of rotating Roundup Ready wheat with Roundup Ready canola would be greater than the benefits, because additional herbicides would have to be introduced to clear away leftover or “volunteer” seeds from previous plantings.

Graham Scoles, associate dean of research in the College of Agriculture at the University of Saskatchewan, said that the economic benefit of Roundup Ready wheat is much less than that of Roundup Ready canola or soybeans. This is because controlling weeds in wheat fields is relatively easy compared with other GM crops, he said.

Scoles said that the University of Saskatchewan is on the verge of commercializing herbicide-resistant wheat developed the old fashioned way—by breeding it over generations. This, according to Scoles, may assuage the concerns of importing countries. “Europe has developed a stance that isn't supported by science,” he said, “but that's where we're at at the moment, and that's the market we have to sell into.”