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Comment by cisanti | Hacker News Reader

You seem like a person who knows the deal. Is there illegal market for Monsanto seeds? Let's say people smuggling the product out of USA to countries that they can't go after the IP etc? Could North Korea use secretly their seeds to have better output or are those seeds so very specifically engineered?

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Most commercial varieties these days are hybrids. Many of the desirable traits are fixed for the plants that grow from that "F1" generation. But if you try to plant harvested seeds from those plants ("F2" generation) you'll get inconsistent results. It's possible to isolate particular traits via selfing and selecting for those traits. It's a years-long process, but I could see that happening in countries not beholden to Monsanto or trade deals.

It is true for maize that you can create an unstable hybrid, which has been used as a form of IP control by corn seed companies for longer than I have been alive. That is also true for numerous other plants. As far as I know, it is not possible to create an unstable soybean hybrid, which is why Monsanto went the licensing route.

My understanding of beans is that it is possible, but not commercially feasible. Something about the yield of seeds per plant versus the effort to control the crossing of parental inbred lines.

What does unstable in this context exactly mean?

If you replant the unstable seed it might not germinate, if it does is likely to be stunted and sterile.

Chance of successful replication of the desirable traits to the offspring (seeds) of the plants

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