YOU won’t be eating genetically modified bread anytime soon, wherever you live. Agribiotech giant Monsanto, which has spent seven years and hundreds of millions of dollars developing a GM wheat variety resistant to the company’s herbicide Roundup, announced on Monday that it will put the project on hold despite field tests that show the variety helps to improve crop yield and weed control.
The company cites a”less attractive” market for wheat than for its GM cotton, soya and maize. Monsanto’s wheat would have faced tough competition, says Charles Arntzen, a plant biologist at Arizona State University in Tempe. “Weed control in wheat is already pretty effective and very cheap,” he says. “Better…
