Food & agriculture · 1983
First transgenic plant
Scientists used a bacterium to move an antibiotic-resistance gene into tobacco.
In 1983 teams in Ghent, at Monsanto and at Washington University used Agrobacterium to produce the first transgenic plants. It showed genes could be moved into crops directly, rather than bred in over many generations.
What it built on 1
What it led to 4
Related measurements
The dashed line marks when it first worked.
Cereal yield Latest: 4.21 t/ha (2024) Source: Our World in Data