Moving Genes into Crops: The Scientists Behind Plant Biotechnology

Start with the 1977 finding that fragments of Agrobacterium Ti plasmid DNA are present in the nuclear DNA of crown gall tumor tissue. Her page records this as the finding that underlies modern methods of genetically engineering plants.

Working with Marc Van Montagu, Schell described the gene transfer mechanism between Agrobacterium and plants, which made it possible to turn the bacterium into a vector for delivering new genes. He later directed the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne.

Schell's colleague at Ghent University shared the gene transfer discovery and then carried it toward use, co-founding Plant Genetic Systems and later establishing International Plant Biotechnology Outreach to bring biotechnology to agriculture in Africa.

At Washington University in St. Louis, working with Monsanto, Beachy showed that a plant expressing a virus's own coat protein gene can resist that virus. The result was the first genetically engineered virus-resistant food crop, a tomato, and the strategy was later applied to potato, pepper, papaya and squash.

Potrykus aimed gene technology at food security in developing countries. With Peter Beyer he co-invented golden rice, a rice biofortified with provitamin A to reduce vitamin A deficiency, and he later chaired the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board.

Tanksley's Cornell group built the first molecular maps of the tomato and rice genomes and in 1993 achieved the first successful map-based cloning of a gene in a major crop plant. His later work used marker-assisted selection to bring useful traits from wild relatives into cultivated varieties.

Ronald's laboratory identified the rice gene XA21, which confers resistance to bacterial blight, and the Sub1 gene for flooding tolerance. Sub1-derived flood-tolerant rice varieties have reached millions of farmers across Asia and Africa.

With Jeffery Dangl, Jones co-developed the zigzag model, which describes the coevolutionary arms race between plant resistance genes and pathogen effector proteins. It explains why the disease resistance that breeders and engineers deploy keeps having to be renewed.

A Saskatchewan farmer who fought Monsanto in court over its patented genetically modified canola, which was found growing on his land. The case made him a prominent symbol for independent farmers' rights and for debates over how transgenic crops are regulated.

Shiva is among the most prominent international critics of industrial and genetically modified agriculture. She founded Navdanya in 1991, a national movement to protect native seed and biodiversity, and argues for food sovereignty, seed rights and ecological farming.