It would herald the dawn of the GM loaf. If the wheat becomes widely grown by North American farmers, as Monsanto expects, GM might inevitably end up in British bread, whether consumers like it or not. Field trials of GM spring wheat have begun on experimental farms in the American prairies, where the crop is being tested for yield, herbicide resistance and other important characteristics that could affect mass production. One problem is that the gene-carrying chromosomes of wheat are a collection of genomes from three different species of wild grass, from which the cereal was bred by the first farmers. Monsanto has to ensure that the herbicide-resistance genes it inserts into the wheat are only incorporated into the genome that the crop does not share with a common wild relative, the jointed goat grass.
Wheat is an old combination of three different species of grass.
Like other herbicide-resistance crops, the wheat will survive being sprayed with glyphosate, which destroys all weeds in a field. Another concern is whether such GM crops are safe to eat. One of the tests includes a measurement of a product's allergenicity whether the genetic modification makes a food more likely to cause an allergic reaction in sensitive consumers. This is especially important with wheat because a substantial minority of people suffer from coeliac disease, an intolerance to the gluten protein present in wheat. However, James Astwood, director of product safety at Monsanto, said that future genetic modification of wheat might focus on how to make gluten safer by identifying and reducing, or even eliminating, the allergic component.