Biotechnology applications will find their way into this sector and we will eventually succeed in bringing to market nutritionally enhanced vegetables, but I don't think we are there quite yet. Some such examples are beginning to emerge, but they remain to be fully validated.

There has been much talk about the promises of neutraceuticals, but this area is still fraught with uncertainties because a great number of regulatory hurdles will have to be overcome before anyone can claim tangible health benefits in a new vegetable variety. We will be expected to support our claims in the most rigorously scientific manner and to go through a clearance and registration process akin to what pharmaceutical  products are subjected to, and quite different from the relatively simple procedure we follow to bring food products to market.

Modern technology will certainly bring about innovations and new types of food products, but I don't believe that this will happen overnight or without significant hurdles. The costs associated with the new regulatory process put in place to bring GMOs to market are causing significant changes in our industry and creating very high barriers to entry for new products unless these can be proven to be clearly superior to existing products.

I also believe that the vegetables we bring to market are very much perceived as a food product, with the associated notion of taste and culinary delight, and I find it difficult to picture that, in the future, our products would be sold in drugstores and presented as quasi drugs.