On August 4, Monsanto (now part of Pharmacia Corp, Peapack, NJ) announced unconditional royalty-free licenses to its technologies used in the development of GoldenRice, a genetically modified rice variety enriched with Vitamin A precursors. Developed by Ingo Potrykus (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich) and Peter Beyer (University of Freiburg, Germany), production of GoldenRice utilizes as many as 70 patented technologies held by 32 affiliations, making the original goal of free distribution to farmers in developing countries unlikely. However, in May, Zeneca Agrochemicals (London) started the ball rolling through a license agreement with Potrykus and Beyer. In exchange for all rights, Zeneca agreed to support the investors' idea of offering free use of their technology for “humanitarian research. . .and for use and local sale by resource poor farmers in developing countries.” Monsanto is the first company to act upon Zeneca's example, but others are expected to follow this month.