In cotton, Syngenta has received permission to include the Monsanto Bt gene and a herbicide
tolerance gene from Bayer Crop Science. This is due to an antitrust settlement in May 2007 that
imposed conditions on Monsanto’s vertical acquisition of Delta Pine & Land to terminate all
provisions in its cotton seed licenses that restrict trait stacking of genes from different sources.
The GM seed market has seen tremendous growth and change over the last decade. Using
Dmrkynetic data, Figures 1-3 show the adoption rate of GM corn, soybean, and cotton seed,
respectively. The acreage share of GM seeds is now over 80% for each of these crops. However,
the growth patterns for single-trait and stacked GM seeds are strikingly different across crops.
For corn, the rise in stacked seeds outpaced the adoption of single-trait seeds especially after
2005, while in soybeans, the single-trait seeds remain dominant over the whole time period.