Monsanto aims for the grocery store with new biotech fruits and vegetables

Agri-business giant Monsanto, known for its Roundup Ready seeds that are engineered to be resistant to the common herbicide, is "developing new varieties of produce with added benefits for consumers," that may change how many shop for produce, Tim Lloyd of Harvest Public Media reports. The company's seed catalog now includes 4,000 fruit and vegetable varieties across 20 species. "The tearless EverMild onion and SweetPeak melon that turns light orange when it’s ripe are just the opening acts," Lloyd writes.

"Monsanto is definitely putting its time and its energy behind these investments in fruits and vegetables," David Stark, a vice president at Monsanto who oversees the company’s push into the checkout aisle, told Lloyd. "I’ve got tons of things coming." While the market for fresh produce sales totaled $39.8 billion in 2010 and represents a promising opportunity for Monsanto and other biotech companies, consumer resistance to genetically modified foods still exists. "The perception is someone’s been messing with my food," Kathy Means, vice president for the Produce Marketing Association, told Lloyd. "Though the U.S. government and others have deemed these breeding techniques safe, marketers still have to deal with these consumer perceptions."

"Clearly there are a lot of people who have questions about biotechnology, not just in the U.S. but around the world," Stark said. Monsanto hopes to deal with those concerns by basing its produce line around products that do not involve direct manipulation of the genetic code. Monsanto left the fruit and vegetable seed business for the most part in the mid-1990s but returned in the mid-2000s with the purchase of seed companies Seminis and De Ruiter. (Read more)