EU environment ministers dealt a blow to efforts to get more GMO crops grown in Europe as they agreed to uphold eight national bans on genetically modified maize and rapeseed types.

State government policy has been vital in helping to shape the Australian biotechnology industry. Here, Cristy Burne takes us for a tour of Western Australia, the state that later this year will host the national biotech conference.

New Zealand biotech Neuren today lodged the prospectus for its mid-January IPO with ASIC, announcing that it will aim to raise AUD$15 million, giving it an indicative market capitalisation of AUD$40 million.

Is the NSW Carr government -- the first state government to legislate for a moratorium on genetically modified crops -- having second thoughts?

Onyx Pharmaceuticals - which is developing one of the most promising new cancer therapies on the horizon - has said it will not file for US approval of its kidney cancer drug as soon as some investors had anticipated.

Claims by anti-GM activists that the Victorian government and Bayer CropScience are putting farmers' livelihoods at risk, by keeping secret the locations of genetically modified canola trials, have been scotched with the revelation that they have known the location of at least one participating farm for more than a year.

At the last minute, Agbiotech giant Bayer CropScience has pulled the plug on its plan to conduct a 40-hectare demonstration trial of its genetically modified hybrid canolas in NSW.

From wine to wheat to mouse plagues, Australian life scientists are nothing if not creative in agricultural biotech, writes Graeme O'Neill.

Almost two months ago, the Victorian Labor government stunned the state's biotechnology industry by imposing a four-year, legislated moratorium on genetically modified (GM) canola cropping.

Monsanto Australia will make no further investment in efforts to commercialise its genetically modified (GM) herbicide-tolerant Roundup Ready canola in Australia for at least 12 months.

International agbiotech company Bayer CropScience has acquired a licence from CSIRO to develop new crops using the patented RNA interference (RNAi) gene-silencing technology developed by CSIRO Plant Industry researchers.