From the Green Revolution to the Gene Revolution

The Green Revolution brought high-yielding semi-dwarf wheat and rice varieties, developed with conventional breeding methods, to millions of small-scale farmers, initially in Asia and Latin America, but later in Africa as well. The gains achieved during the early decades of the Green Revolution were extended in the 1980s and 1990s to other crops and to less favoured regions (Evenson and Gollin, 2003). In comparison with the research that drove the Green Revolution, the majority of agricultural biotechnology research and almost all of the commercialization is being carried out by private firms based in industrialized countries.