Commercializing New Products from
 Plant Biotechnology:
 Problems and Perspectives

 Cyrus McKell
 NPI, Salt Lake City, Utah


 INTRODUCTION

 Possibly the most important phase of biotechnology research and devel-
opment is product commercialization. Obviously, all management func-
tions must be successfully carried out to encourage and support product
development. Teamwork is essential at the corporate level, as well as in all
aspects of management, to ensure effective and timely use of resources and
provide the proper environment for the elaboration of products that have
been promised. This is not to say that the dearth of products up to the
present time indicates that the industry lacks good management. Indeed,
the challenges assumed and the obstacles facing product development are
formidable, and only the companies that have good management and re-
search will be able to succeed.
 Plant biotechnology companies are generally newer than their counter-
parts in the fields of human health, veterinary medicine, and pharmaceu-
ticals. Thus, the appearance of plant products has lagged. However, plant
biotechnology has the advantage of utilizing previous research that pro-
vides the basis for biotechnology in general, but can be applied specifically
to solve problems in plant agriculture. Although we have seen precious few
results from plant biotechnology during the past two or three years, we
now can expect to see new products and revolutionary processes tumble
out of this scientific cornucopia that will bring benefits to an agricultural
industry faced with the necessity to increase its efficiency and be more
innovative.
 Tissue culture and various related procedures were the first modern
methods of plant biotechnology to be applied to create new products.
Cloning of cymbidium orchid shoot apices in 1960, by George Morel in
France, allowed the mass production of selected high value plants of iden-
tical genotype. Subsequently many orchid growers around the world
adopted tissue culture techniques and by 1977 (Arditti, 1977) 35 genera