Reuters via Checkbiotech.org

Codetec, one of a handful of biotechnology companies in Brazil that plan to market genetically modified soybeans, said on Thursday GMO soy seeds could reach farmers, legally, in 2005.

"If the new law passes in the coming months, we should be able to sell our GMO soy seeds to the retailers ... by the next crop," Ivo Marcos Carraro, executive director of the Central Cooperative of Agricultural Research, or Codetec, told Reuters by phone.

"That means producers could have fully legal commercial GMO soy by the 2005/06 (Oct.-Sept.) crop."

But Codetec cannot yet legally sell its GMO soy seeds. Congress is currently working on a broad law to regulate biotechnology in the agriculture sector.

Codetec has four varieties of GMO soybeans ready for sale in Brazil that are based on Monsanto Co.'s Roundup Ready Soybeans, which are modified to resist harm from the company's Roundup weed killer. It formed a partnership with the St. Louis, Missouri, biotech company in 1997.

Carraro said his company, which is located in Cascavel, Parana, was still trying to produce enough seeds to meet the expected demands for GMO.

"All signs indicate the biotech seeds will be in high demand. Look at Rio Grande do Sul (No. 3 soy state) - over 90 percent of the planted area is GMO and that happened while transgenic soy was banned," he said.

The Brazilian government in September granted amnesty to soy producers to plant illegal GMO soy seeds and sell the subsequent crop through 2004, as part of a move to bring the country's black market GMO soy production under control.

But the amnesty decree left in place a ban on the sale of GM soy seeds. Only the farmers who already have illegal GMO soybeans from the previous crop can plant them.

The decree was meant as a stop-gap measure to curb the spread of GMO soy until Congress passed a broader law.

Codetec, a research firm spun off from the Parana State Cooperatives Association in 1995, has invested about 8 million reais ($2.8 million) in its GMO soy varieties - three for the southern soy belt and one for the center-west.

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