Cargill: Biotechnology and Value Creation in Wheat

About 40 percent of the world's food supply came from rice and wheat-based foods. The genome of wheat (a genome is a set of chromosomes) was much larger than those of other crops such as rice. Deciphering the wheat genome was a much more complex process. Wheat had six DNA strands (e.g., humans have only a double-helix DNA strand) and almost twice as many genes as humans. GM wheat would be available for production by 2004. The objective of this case is to describe: segregation and identity-preservation issues in the wheat value chain, the role of Cargill in that value chain, and issues surrounding the introduction of genetically modified wheat.