Monsanto drops Australian GM canola program

Monsanto Australia will make no further investment in efforts to commercialise its genetically modified (GM) herbicide-tolerant Roundup Ready canola in Australia for at least 12 months.

The company's decision came in the wake of the Victorian government's decision to impose a four-year moratorium on commercialisation of GMHT canolas, and a decision by the NSW government to not to allow a large-scale coexistence trial sought by Monsanto and Bayer CropScience, despite independent recommendations that coexistence trials should proceed.

Monsanto Australia's communications manager, Mark Buckingham, said the company had made a business decision to divert its investment in GM canola into other business opportunities in the region where there was a higher degree of investment certainty.

"It's disappointing, given that we have federal approval to commercialise Roundup Ready canola," Buckingham said. "But the patchwork of regulations across each canola-growing state in Australia has created an environment of commercial uncertainty."

Neither the Victorian nor NSW governments have yet revealed the conditions they will apply to further field trials of GMHT canolas under their moratorium regimes. But Monsanto's decision means it will make no further plantings, even on a small scale, anywhere in Australia for the next 12 months.

Monsanto has made no announcement on the future of the GM canola-breeding program it sponsors at Agriculture Victoria's Institute of Dryland Horticulture at Horsham. The company has spent millions of dollars on the institute's canola breeding program over the past half decade. All of Monsanto's experimental Roundup Ready lines were bred at the institute.

Buckingham said the company's forced decision was also disappointing given the popularity of Roundup Ready and other GM canolas in Canada, and the fact that Canada's GM canola remained competitive in international markets.

"There remains scant -- if any -- evidence that there is an advantage in being GM-free," he said. "The current popularity of triazine-tolerant canolas in Australia means that an alternative to this technology would be very valuable to the Australian grain industry, both for productivity and environmental reasons."

Buckingham said the Australia-wide ban on GM canola also needed to be seen against the background of the continuing expansion of GM crop acreages around the world -- 15 per cent last year, on top of an annual growth rate of 10 per cent for the past eight years.

Bayer CropScience bioscience manager Susie O'Neill said Bayer planned to maintain its own GM canola breeding program, at its Horsham site, but the company was awaiting decisions by the Victorian and NSW governments on future field trial conditions.