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After fifteen years in research and development (R&D), crop biotechnology has recently entered its commercial phase. First generation products have been crops with herbicide tolerance and resistance to particular insect pests. Second generation products, transgenic plants with enhanced quality traits, are fast approaching commercialization (Kalaitzandonakes and Maltsbarger 1998).

Even the optimists among biotechnology proponents have been caught off guard by the extremely fast adoption rates of first generation biotechnologies. In 1999, just four years from commercial introduction, an estimated 50 percent of the total US corn, soybean and cotton acreage has been planted with transgenics. The “coming of age” of crop biotechnology, however, has triggered dramatic structural changes in the seed/biotechnology complex over the last five years. Through a wave of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) the …