This is a big question and not easy to answer without more specifics. Which country or region are you interested in? Which particular crop or trait are you working with? If you can let me know, I can try and offer you some more specfic information. Best wishes, Peter
You can get a lot of good information in this recent review article.
Prado et al. 2014 Genetically Engineered Crops: From Idea to Product. Annual Review of Plant Biology. Vol. 65: 769-790
The authors are from Monsanto, so they have a great deal of first-hand knowledge.
Expanding on Dr. Kearns' point, they say "Given the large number of regulatory submissions that are made around the world for a given GE crop, there is a great deal of diversity in how the regulatory safety data are compiled and presented to regulators."
They also estimate the industry average in prelaunch costs at $17 million, which include regulatory as well as more mundane steps as seed production. These costs follow about $120 million in development costs over 5-10 years.
The conclusion I draw is that if your trait is worth that much money, then the regulatory costs are not prohibitive. On the other hand, the development costs are prohibitive for the vast majority of traits for which there is no way to recover an investment of >$100 million.
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-arplant-050213-040039
@ Thomas,
I guess in the future, there will be only a couple of Mega-Biotech-companies left in the whole world to produce those 'specialty' seeds and keep controlling the seed markets, because only they can afford it.
@Yuan-Yeu,
I'm keen to learn more of your perspective having worked with developing transgenic technologies. Did you find prospects of commercializing your the transgenic crops to be unlikely? Is the cost of research and development different in China than what the Monsanto team portrays? Is the market value of non-blockbuster traits greater?
The corollary to my conclusion above is that crop improvement will continue to be dominated by non-transgenic methods for reasons of economics. The sophistication of breeding methods continues to advance, though perhaps not as visibly except for "genomics." For the hundreds of traits in hundreds of crops that were improved in the last few years, non-transgenic methods have been effective and economical. The big companies may get a monopoly on one technology, but crop improvement will continue to improve crops through many channels.
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