the agrochemical and seed industries (Parayil, 2003; Chat-away et al., 2004). Regulatory pressures, which made it more challenging and costly to bring new chemical-based products to market, and the existence of new science and a willingness on the part of industries to engage in large-scale change meant that biotechnology was adopted in research and development in a radical way (Chataway et al., 2004). However, the nature of change was such that adoption of new biotechnology based techniques (predominantly ge­netic manipulation) initially contributed to strengthening firms' abilities to produce chemicals rather than biotech­nology-based alternatives to chemicals. Most multinational agrochemical companies used biotechnology to speed up the screening process for agrochemicals and to improve its efficiency and targeting (Steinrucken and Hermann, 2000). Biotechnology is closely related to changed developments in pharmaceuticals (Malerba and Orsenigo, 2002) and relates to three main areas:
•     Using genomics to validate targets for new pesticides;
•     Using combinatorial chemistry to generate large num­bers of new chemicals for screening; and
•     Using high throughput screening to test very large num­bers of chemicals, rapidly on a range of living targets.

These new methods are unlikely to increase the number of new chemical products reaching the market but they are expected to allow companies to meet increasingly stringent regulatory requirements while still launching one or two major new products a year (Tait et al., 2000).
     The development of genetically engineered crops is not entirely within the private sector in NAE; two examples thus far of publicly developed GE crops that have been commer­cialized or are undergoing regulatory review are virus resis­tant papaya and virus resistant plum (AGBIOS, 2008).
     A key feature of the early evolution of biotechnology were efforts to create a "life sciences" based industrial sec­tor. Negative public opinion is one factor that affected these plans. The concept of life science synergies played an impor­tant part in agrochemical and biotechnology industry man­agers' strategic planning (Tait et al., 2000). Early interpreta­tions of the term "life science" assumed that, by using bio­technology to gain a better understanding of the functioning of cells across a wide spectrum of species, there would be useful cross-fertilization of ideas between the development of new drugs and of new crop protection products for agri­culture. The vision was one of synergy at "discovery" level, where a better understanding of genomics and cell process­es, made possible by fundamental knowledge gained in the life sciences can lead to new drugs, new pesticides, GE crops and genetic treatments for disease.
     These assumptions were accepted without much ques­tioning until the very early years of the 21st century, partly to justify the continued retention within the same multi­national company of two sectors with markedly different profit potentials, pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals. How­ever, the original conception of a life science sector is now being reinterpreted. The synergy worked well where both partners are interested in sources of chemical novelty, but not in the gene area. The large scale marketing of genetically engineered organisms is not a significant factor in the strate­gies of pharmaceutical companies. Although experience in

the USA and other countries has indicated that GE crop de­velopment is potentially very profitable, the negative public reaction in Europe has created potential conflicts of interest between the two industry sectors (Tait et al., 2000).
     Over a medium and longer term timescale useful syn­ergies between pharmaceutical and agricultural areas of biotechnology may again emerge, for example genetically engineered pharmaceutical crops. However, it is not clear that a link between the agrochemical and pharmaceutical divisions of companies will be maintained (Tait et al., 2000) and this could influence the direction on agriculture related science, technology and innovation. GE crops producing novel compounds not intended for food use (industrial and pharmaceutical crops) are currently grown only in the Unit­ed States in small quantities and under strict management systems. Under these conditions, no ecological impacts have been detected.
     It is clear that the development of important new tech­nologies in plant breeding (i.e., hybridization, embryo trans­fer, genetic engineering, etc.) has significantly increased pro­ductivity of cropping systems in NAE. Moreover, the shift from public institutions to private industry in the develop­ment of new varieties and technologies in plant breeding has had considerable impact on the development of crop­ping systems across the region. Where new technologies and products were developed that could be protected through IPR, industry consolidation has tended to occur. Many firms combined to take advantage of strong demand complemen­tarities between products  (Just and Hueth,  1993). This industrial concentration may create efficiencies but it may also limit the technological options as smaller firms which often bring dynamism to a sector find it harder to compete at the level of bringing products to market. However, they often arrange collaborations with larger firms in which they bring initial innovative research to a company with greater resources for product development and deployment. Similar arrangements are increasingly common between researchers in academia and large firms as well.

2.4.3.3 Nutrients in cropping systems
The productivity of agricultural crops draws on three pri­mary sources: carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and water and nutrients from the soil. While carbon is replen­ished by the atmosphere, continuous harvest of plant ma­terial can eventually strip reactive nitrogen (N), potassium (K) and phosphorus (P) from the soils impeding further plant growth. Agricultural production can also be limited by minor nutrient deficiencies, but N, P and K are the main limiting factors for production. Hence these are the main nu­trients that are augmented through synthetic fertilization.
     Traditional fertilizers were organic manures, but by the early to mid 1900s the use of inorganic sources of P, mined from phosphate rocks, and reactive N produced by indus­trial processes came into agricultural use as a result of the development of the Haber-Bosch process in 1910. After the end of World War II the use of synthetic fertilizers increased dramatically as a result of the breeding of new varieties able to respond to the increased fertilizer levels. The trends for NAE are similar to the world as a whole. Between 1950 and 1972 the supply of NPK fertilizers to Soviet agriculture in­creased almost 10 times and the rate of NPK application in-