Only 10 years ago, agricultural biotechnology appeared to be a magical cornucopia for a hungry world.

Biotechnology, as the hopeful envisioned it, would spawn hardy crops capable of growing in harsh climates, crops with increased tolerance to disease that produced more food with less human effort.

But critical questions quickly began to surface: What are the ecological effects of such crops? Will genetically modified crops containing foreign genes cause dangerous allergic reactions or lead to other medical problems in people?

At the center of the ongoing debate are Indiana University Bloomington biologists Roger Hangarter, Roger Innes, and Loren Rieseberg. Hangarter is president of the influential American Society of Plant Biologists; Innes and Rieseberg are conducting research that will answer crucial questions posed by government, agriculture, and environmental advocates about the safety and usefulness of genetically modified, or GM, crops.

Taken together, grants to Rieseberg and Innes from the National Science Foundation total about $4 million. These grants mainly focus on the genetics and evolutionary histories of crop plant species and their wild cousins. So far, Rieseberg has found that some genetically modified crops are not likely to have negative ecological impacts on surrounding habitats, because the GM crops do not readily exchange genes with nearby wild cousins. Innes is finding that resistance to fruit yeasts has evolved independently—and similarly—in many types of plants including soybean, the second most common crop in the United States. Some plants are better than others at resisting fruit yeast, and this may be due to variations in the disease resistance genes carried by different plants.

Because studies of differently modified crops show that GM crops often pose no dangers to the environment or to human health, there is a growing consensus among plant biologists that GM crops should not be discarded out-of-hand, but rather extensively studied for their ecological and health effects before they are introduced to farms.

Hangarter, whose presidential term with the American Society of Plant Biologists began in October 2004, wants his scientific organization to be a part of the public discourse, especially when that discourse could lead to the regulation or outright ban of GM crops in major agricultural states.

In October, Hangarter and key ASPB scientists fought four California ballot measures that sought to ban local use of GM crops. The plant biologists argued that any outright ban would force many farmers to return to using pesticides—an alternative of dubious value. Three of the measures were soundly defeated, while the fourth, before Marin County voters, won by a surprisingly narrow margin.