Edward Cocking of Nottingham University in England vividly described a January 1983 meeting of genetic researchers in Miami that is widely regarded as the dawn of the modern biotechnology era.

"Everybody could see that the gates were opening," said Cocking, referring to presentations by three separate teams of researchers who had successfully inserted the genes from one organism into another. "It was almost self-evident at that point that it was only a matter of time until other genes were inserted."

Twenty years later, plant biotechnology has grown to become the most rapidly adopted technology in the history of agriculture, and is now used by between 5.5 million and 6 million farmers in 16 countries around the globe, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications. Biotechnology is so pervasive that in 2003 in the United States, it's predicted that 80 percent of soybean acres will be planted with biotech varieties.

In 1983, the work of the three research teams all focused on a type of bacteria called Agrobacterium tumefaciens, which has been described as a "natural genetic engineer" for its ability to splice its own genes into plant cells. "They (researchers) hoped to convert Agrobacterium from a disease-causing germ into a pack mule, ready to carry new, foreign genes into plant cells," wrote Dan Charles in "Lords of the Harvest."

They succeeded, and there are now more than 70 biotech agricultural crops that have been approved for use in North America, including varieties of soybeans, cotton, canola, corn, potatoes, squash, tomatoes and papaya.

"The first biotech plants offered insights on ways we could improve food and crops selectively giving plants beneficial, new qualities with greater precision than traditional plant-breeding methods," explained Mary-Dell Chilton, a renowned biotech pioneer who led one of those first research teams that announced their findings 20 years ago. "The discovery set the stage for a new era of discovery to improve food, feed and fiber crop production."

To date, these approved crops have been enhanced in one of the following ways:

* Herbicide tolerant crops are immune to broad-spectrum herbicides that are effective against harmful weeds but have no effect on the crop. That lets farmers spray less often with just one herbicide and often reduces the need for plowing, which reduces soil runoff.
* Pest resistant crops have been enhanced with naturally occurring pesticides-- like the protein from Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt-- that ward off crop-eating insects like rootworm, bollworm and the European corn borer.

* Virus resistant crops are shielded from plant viruses in the same way humans are protected from disease?by being "immunized" and thus building a natural defense.
* Stacked trait crops combine these and other traits.

These advancements mark just the beginning for how biotechnology can be used to produce more and better food while helping to preserve the environment. "As we look at the next 20 years of plant biotechnology, we expect to see considerable advances, which will improve quality of life, from foods to pharmaceuticals to new industrial materials, bringing the benefits of biotechnology to the people of the world who need them most," said Chilton.

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