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Monsanto Co. on Monday won another round in a legal battle with U.S. organic growers as an appeals court threw out the growers' efforts to stop the company from suing farmers if traces of its patented biotech genes are found in crops. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a previous ruling that found organic growers had no reason to try to block Monsanto from suing them as the company had pledged it would not take them to court if biotech crops accidentally mix in with organics.

American wheat farmers and a food safety advocacy group filed a lawsuit Thursday against biotech seed developer Monsanto Co, accusing the company of failing to protect the U.S. wheat market from contamination by its unauthorized wheat. The petition, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, seeks class-action status to represent other farmers it says were harmed by lower wheat prices as some foreign buyers have shied away from U.S. wheat.

Monsanto Co. said on Wednesday that broad testing of commercial wheat seeds in Oregon and Washington state has found no sign of its long-shelved experimental biotech wheat, and company officials said it was possible the illegal wheat discovered growing in an Oregon field may have been the result of sabotage. Monsanto officials said they have supplied DNA material and an event-specific test to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help screen commercial supplies for any contamination of the company's genetically modified herbicide-tolerant wheat known as Roundup Ready. The European Union, Taiwan, Korea and Japan have also requested and received the test.

The Oregon field in which a farmer found sprouts of unauthorized genetically modified wheat was never used to study altered varieties, a lawyer for the grower said on Tuesday. The farmer has "no idea" how the altered wheat made it into his 125-acre field, said Tim Bernasek, a partner at the Portland law firm Dunn Carney. The disclosures heightened the mystery that has swirled around the farm since the U.S. Department of Agriculture said last week that the strain, modified by seed giant Monsanto Co to tolerate treatments of weed killer, was found.

While regulators probe the discovery of an experimental genetically modified wheat long thought abandoned by biotech seed developer Monsanto Co, the company has a new line of field experiments on biotech wheat underway. The company is no longer pursuing the same "Roundup Ready" spring wheat it designed more than a decade ago to tolerate dousings of its Roundup weedkiller, which is the strain found in a wheat field in Oregon in April. But it is developing similar strains that are genetically altered for herbicide tolerance as well as other traits, according to the company and regulatory filings.

A U.S. wheat farmer has sued Monsanto Co , accusing the biotech seed giant of gross negligence for not containing an experimental genetically modified wheat discovered in an Oregon field that has put U.S. wheat export sales at risk. Farmer Ernest Barnes, who grows wheat in Morton County in the southwest corner of Kansas, filed suit Monday in U.S. District Court in Wichita, Kansas, alleging that he and other wheat farmers have been hurt financially by the discovery of the unapproved biotech wheat that Monsanto said it stopped testing and shelved nine years ago.

For global consumers now on high alert over a rogue strain of genetically modified wheat found in Oregon, the question is simple: How could this happen? For a cadre of critics of biotech crops, the question is different: How could it not? The questions arose after the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday that it was investigating the mysterious appearance of experimental, unapproved genetically engineered wheat plants on a farm in Oregon. The wheat was developed years ago by Monsanto Co to tolerate its Roundup herbicide, but the world's largest seed company scrapped the project and ended all field trials in 2004.

Monsanto Co is hosting a "Bee Summit." Bayer AG is breaking ground on a "Bee Care Center." And Sygenta AG is funding grants for research into the accelerating demise of honeybees in the United States, where the insects pollinate fruits and vegetables that make up roughly a quarter of the American diet. The agrichemical companies are taking these initiatives at a time when their best-selling pesticides are under fire from environmental and food activists who say the chemicals are killing off millions of bees. The companies say their pesticides are not the problem, but critics say science shows the opposite.

Canadian regulators have given a green light to Dow AgroSciences, a unit of Dow Chemical Co, to introduce a controversial new herbicide meant to control spreading weed resistance, Dow said on Thursday. Health Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA)approved "Enlist Duo" herbicide for use in Canada, making it the first country to authorize the new herbicide.

Monsanto Co, the world's largest seed company, is developing two new platforms that diverge from its core business and are seen as potential key long-term growth drivers, according to top Monsanto executives. The first, a precision planting product called "FieldScripts," is being rolled out for beta testing this year to more than 150 farmers in the U.S. Midwest.