Transgenic Crops: The Next Generation, or an Example of 2020 Vision

Genetically modified, i.e. transgenic crops, are now being grown on several million acres throughout the world, mainly in North America. Most of these ‘first generation’ products have specific agronomic traits designed to improve the efficiency of production. For example herbicide tolerant soybean and insect resistant corn are the two most widely grown transgenic crops. Increasingly, the new transgenic varieties under test contain product quality or other higher value traits intended to provide specific benefits to the end user whether it be the producer of specialist chemicals or the consumer. This review describes examples of these ‘second generation’ traits and attempts to predict the range of household, medical, industrial and environmental products that might become available over the next 20 years.