Print This PageCotton
Cotton is an important global crop producing a range of essential products from all-natural fibre to oil and animal feed.
Two of Monsanto's cotton biotech traits are currently available commercially in Australian cotton seed varieties; Bollgard II® and Roundup Ready Flex® cotton.
Cotton varieties incorporating these traits have identical lint and oil quality as conventional cotton lines, however they offer significant production and environmental benefits. These benefits include fewer pesticide applications, easier crop management and increased profitability.
Bollgard II cotton provides in-built protection against the larvae of Helicoverpa spp., one of the cotton industry's most significant insect pests. It is a second generation product, which follows the introduction of INGARD® cotton in 1996. When compared to INGARD, Bollgard II contains an additional protein which improves the stability of insect control during the growing season and offers improved benefits for resistance management.
Roundup Ready Flex cotton possesses both vegetative and reproductive tolerance to the Roundup® family of herbicides. While the first generation product, Roundup Ready cotton, contains one copy of the CP4EPSPS gene, Roundup Ready Flex contains two copies. It also has a unique promoter sequence that allows for the expression of the CP4-EPSPS protein in the reproductive plant parts as well as the vegetative plant tissue. Results from several years of research and commercialisation in both Australia and the US, have shown that Roundup Ready Flex cultivars are tolerant to over-the-top Roundup applications well into flowering.
Bollgard II and Roundup Ready Flex cotton offer more efficient production systems which have improved the environmental sustainability of cotton production in Australia.
