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You are in GM Crops and Food → Introductory Guide → Worldwide Commercial Growing

Worldwide Commercial Growing

During 2005, 21 countries grew GM crops commercially on 90 million hectares, an 11% increase on 2004. The majority of this arises from increased acreage in Brazil. In Europe, Romania, Spain, France, Portugal, the Czech Republic and Germany grew small amounts of GM crops commercially.

The only GM traits in commercial use (except for some GM disease-resistant papaya in Hawaii and squash in the USA) are herbicide tolerance and insect resistance using Bt genes. The herbicide tolerance and insect resistance traits have also both been included in some varieties of cotton and maize which is known as gene 'stacking'. Herbicide tolerance made up 71%; Bt insect resistance, 18%; and the two traits 'stacked', 11% of the area of GM crops grown. Soybeans (60%), cotton (11%), oilseed rape (4%) and maize (24%) are the only GM crops grown commercially on a large scale.

The figures in this table give the area of GM crops grown in different countries (in millions of hectares) and have been obtained from the ISAAA briefings.

Area of GM crops grown in different countries (in millions of hectares)

Country	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005
USA	20.5	28.7	30.3	35.7	39.0	42.8	47.6	49.8
Argentina	4.3	6.7	10.0	11.8	13.5	13.9	16.2	17.1
Canada	2.8	4.0	3.0	3.2	3.5	4.4	5.4	5.8
Brazil	0	0	0	0	0	3.0	5.0	9.4
China	<0.1	0.3	0.50	1.5	2.1	2.8	3.7	3.3
Paraguay	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1.8
India	0	0	0	0	<0.1	0.1	0.5	1.3
South Africa	<0.1	0.1	0.20	0.27	0.3	0.4	0.5	0.5
Australia	0.1	0.1	0.15	0.21	0.1	0.1	0.2	0.3
Uruguay	0	0	<0.1	<0.1	<0.1	<0.05	0.3	0.3
Mexico	<0.1	<0.1	<0.1	<0.1	<0.1	<0.05	0.1	0.1
Philippines	0	0	0	0	0	<0.05	0.1	0.1
Romania	0	<0.1	<0.1	<0.1	<0.1	<0.05	0.1	0.1
Spain	<0.1	<0.1	<0.1	<0.1	<0.1	<0.05	0.1	0.1
France	<0.1	<0.1	<0.1	0	0	0	0	<0.1
Germany	0	<0.1	<0.1	<0.1	<0.1	<0.05	<0.05	<0.1
Colombia	0	0	0	0	<0.05	<0.05	<0.05	<0.1
Honduras	0	0	0	0	0	<0.05	<0.05	<0.1
Iran	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	<0.1
Portugal	0	<0.1	<0.1	0	0	0	0	<0.1
Czech Republic	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	<0.05
Bulgaria	0	0	0	0	0	<0.05	0	0
Indonesia	0	0	0	0	0	<0.05	0	0
Ukraine	0	<0.1	0	0	0	0	0	0
Total	27.8	39.9	44.2	52.6	58.7	67.7	81.0	90.0

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