Stone to Silicon

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.

See it in the living treeWikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

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