326 Recent achievements in cereal improvements through biotechnology.

Gerard Barry. Co-Director, Rice Strategic Business Team, Ag Sector, Monsanto Life Sciences Company, St. Louis, MO, USA.

Although the genetic transformation of cereal crops initially lagged behind other major crops, their great importance has been the impetus for the accelerated application of this and other modern technologies to these crops. This acceleration could be measured by the fact that a number of transgenic traits have been developed and commercialized in corn and many others are in the pipeline. In wheat and rice, there are quite a number of traits in advanced development. Both for experimental purposes and as a means of accelerating commercial development, there have been increasing and more sophisticated applications of molecular breeding tools in all cereals and these will lead to greater understandings of germplasm, faster gene identification and cloning, and faster and wider introgression of transgenic traits.