Associated Press
06-16-06
With new soybean, Monsanto reinvents age-old breeding game
CHRISTOPHER LEONARD
Associated Press
ST. LOUIS - When Monsanto Co. developed its newest strain of engineered
soybeans, the company didn't use gene splicing. It used math.
Monsanto has touted the Vistive soybean as a scientific breakthrough because it
is ready-made for processing into healthier food oils that are low in trans fats.
But the secret recipe behind Vistive doesn't include genetic material from
bacteria or other organisms that Monsanto uses to develop plants that grow
pesticide among other traits.
Instead, there is an enormous numbers game, a complex system of data
analysis, gene screening and a transcontinental network of greenhouses
churning out seeds every day of the year.
Following the path of Vistive's development - from a marketing idea at Monsanto
headquarters in suburban St. Louis to the soybean fields where it was first
planted last year - shows how the world's biggest seed company is changing the
rules of crop production.
By many measures, the Vistive bean was developed through traditional breeding
- mating one plant with another, again and again, until the offspring contain
desired traits. But Monsanto applied new technologies to the age-old process,
drawing on techniques the company developed over a decade of splicing genes.
The techniques shaved at least three years off the process of moving Vistive
from the drawing board to the marketplace, said Monsanto Vice President David
Stark.
Although Monsanto is known around the world for making genetically engineered
plants - derided as "Frankenfood" by critics - it is focusing more than ever on
developing new plants through breeding.
"I think the thing that's emerging in our business, particularly in the last year and I
think in the next few years, is the importance of breeding," Monsanto Chief
Executive Officer Hugh Grant told stock analysts earlier this month.
About 1 percent of new crops this year were developed with advanced breeding
techniques, and that should increase to 5 percent or 6 percent by 2008, Grant
said.
The Vistive bean traces its roots to 2002. At the time, most of Monsanto's seeds
benefited farmers, with traits like pest resistance. Stark wanted to develop a plant
that had direct benefit for consumers.
"I was out talking to the food industry about biotechnology, trying to determine
what they want from a company like Monsanto," Stark recalled. "One of the
things that was recurring was that, well, it looks like trans fats could be really
important."
Concern was mounting about trans fats contributing to unhealthy cholesterol
levels. But it's not easy to squeeze trans fats out of the industrial food system.
Trans fats are made when oils are partially hydrogenated, a process that stops
oils from naturally degenerating. This gives the oils a longer shelf life.
Stark thought there was a solution - breed a soybean with oils that are already
stable enough to have a long shelf life. Cutting out hydrogenation would mean
cutting out trans fats.
Figuring out how to do that falls to the likes of Monsanto scientist Pradip Das.
Das runs Monsanto's crop analytics laboratory, where analysts test everything
from the starch content of a corn kernel to the genetic map of a cotton plant.
Das said scientists there knew that a key reason soybean oil degenerates is the
presence of linolenic acid. Breeding beans low in the acid could reduce the need
for hydrogenation.
Genetic splicing wasn't necessary to derive such a bean. Researchers at Iowa
State University developed a "low-lin" soybean years ago, according to the
American Soybean Association. Such beans contain about 1 percent linolenic
acid in their oil as opposed to 8 percent in standard beans.
But just because there was already a strain of low-lin beans didn't mean
Monsanto could simply sell it. Commercial soybean and corn plants are like
thoroughbred racehorses, with a long genetic history that emphasizes high yields
over all. This is crucial for big commodity farmers, who typically operate with
razor-thin profit margins and large debt payments.
Melding the low-lin strain of soybean into Monsanto's line of commercial crops
could have taken many years, said Joe Byrum, Monsanto's trait integration team
leader.
Mixing a low-lin bean with a premium soybean produces offspring that still have a
lot of genetic "junk," as Byrum puts it. The goal is to find that one-in-a.m.illion
seed with the low-lin trait and nothing else but the premium genes.
"It's a needle in a haystack," Byrum said. "So if I have a tool that can go in and
pick out the needle every time, that's very efficient."
The tool Byrum uses to pick out the needle is called a genetic marker. Using the
technology, Byrum can take a leaf sample from a soybean sprout and instantly
tell if the seed contains the low-lin trait.
But breeding is a game of big numbers, Byrum said. It's a matter of finding the
right trait hundreds of thousands of times until the offspring is narrowed down to
the right cross.
Monsanto has sped up this numbers game at its laboratory in Ankeny, Iowa. The
lab is a hub for Monsanto's global chain of greenhouses. Seeds are sprouted
there daily, eliminating winter downtime, letting Monsanto breed about three
soybean generations annually, Byrum said.
Genetic samples are taken the moment a seed spouts - whether in the Midwest,
Puerto Rico or Hawaii - and then sent back to Ankeny. Byrum's team analyzes
them using genetic markers, then quickly crunching the results through
computers to determine which seeds are winners.
The right strain was found, and Vistive is planted on about 500,000 acres in the
United States this year, according to Monsanto.
Grant told stock analysts the process that made Vistive could be used to
integrate any number of traits into Monsanto's line of crops.
"We're looking at accessing Genetic diversity globally and using those crosses to
produce seeds that run faster, that perform better," he said.