Monsanto opens Qld research centre

Monsanto has opened a biotechnology research centre in Queensland to support its cotton product stewardship program.

The Monsanto Biotechnology Research Centre (MBRC), located in Toowoomba, includes a laboratory and a certified quarantine glasshouse, and will be used primarily for Monsanto's biotech cotton products including INGARD and BOLLGARD II products.

According to the manager of the facility Stewart Addison, the facility will be used to ensure the quality of product going out to farmers, as well as evaluation of new biotech cotton products, including Roundup Ready Flex cotton. More importantly, he said, the facility would be involved in Monsanto's ongoing resistance monitoring program.

"The crop monitoring and auditing work conducted at this facility ensures that Monsanto cotton technology like BOLLGARD II and our future technologies like Roundup Ready Flex cotton, is managed for the long term. Our technology is proving very popular with more than 95% of cotton growers using some biotech cotton varieties. We want the industry as a whole to have the benefit of these technologies for many years to come," said Monsanto Australia's managing director Terry Bunn.

The Centre will also be involved in ecological research including monitoring of the diversity of non-target, beneficial insects in commercial crops. Bunn said early work had demonstrated environmental benefits from the use of INGARD and BOLLGARD II, and reductions of pesticide use by over 70 per cent, allowing non-target insect populations to flourish.

Queensland Minister for Innovation and the Information Economy, Paul Lucas, opened the Centre.