By Jane Roberts, The Commercial Appeal via Checkbiotech.org

Cotton farmers using transgenic seed to control plant pests will have a choice when Delta and Pine Land Company begins selling a variety now still in the test phase.

The gene won't be on the market in time for spring planting, but farmers are hoping for the next season, said Steve Rodery, agricultural consultant in Marion, Arkansas.

"I'm sure it's going to be accepted and adopted," he said. "Something competitive out there is big news."

Delta and Pine Land, the largest cottonseed producer in the United States, will pay Switzerland-based Syngenta $47 million for licenses to sell its genetic traits. In turn, the Scott, Mississippi-based cotton breeder will receive 70 percent of the licensing revenues tied to Syngenta's insect-resistant traits.

Delta and Pine Land is awaiting regulatory approval from USDA and the Environmental Protection Agency.

"It's a guessing game when they will get approval," said Andy Jordan with the National Cotton Council. "The wait has to do as much with the backlog up there as with the technology itself."

Delta and Pine Land has been selling Monsanto's transgenic seed since it was introduced in 1996. The technology allows seed breeders to insert genetic traits in seed, making the crop resistant to glyphosate, the generic form of RoundUp, and pests like bud worm and boll worm in cotton.

Transgene seeds quickly gained market share because they eliminate the need for pesticides, saving some local cotton farmers up to $100 an acre.

This year, genetically altered seed accounted for nearly 80 percent of cotton planted in the United States and 99.5 percent of the crop in Mississippi, giving Delta and Pine Land access to a huge market and a stake in a wildly competitive industry.

But in May, Monsanto asked for the right to terminate its licensing agreements with D&PL, accusing the seed breeder of failing to calculate and collect royalty payments and claiming it gave the technology to an unlicensed party.

D&PL denied the allegations. Its licensing agreements with Monsanto are effective through 2018.

D&PL says it intends to continue selling Monsanto's product even after the Syngenta technology is approved.

The issue for producers is that Syngenta will offer them an option to Monsanto, which now dominates the transgene business.

"Anytime there is a perceived monopoly, people will be concerned," Jordan said. "Yes, individual farmers do feel Monsanto has a monopoly."

The larger question with transgenes is breeders' rights vs. producers' rights, said Bill Meredith, cotton geneticist at USDA Agricultural Research Service in Stoneville, Miss.

"It's almost like it's World War II again, and D-Day is coming up," he said.

"We used to have people who kept others on their toes in breeding. We don't have as many breeders any more, and that's dangerous."

Jane Roberts, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn.
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

© 2004 - The Commercial Appeal is an E.W. Scripps Company newspaper