Currently, more than 50,000 diseases of crop plants exist worldwide and new diseases are being discovered every year. These diseases continue to present a serious threat to worldwide economies, with approximately 15% of the total U.S. crop production being lost annually to infectious diseases (Kerrigan & Nagel, 1998).

One particularly important example concerns efforts to produce geminivirus-resistant varieties of cassava, a staple food for more than 500 million people. Cassava crop yields can be reduced by up to 80 percent following virus infection and it is thought that crop losses due to this geminivirus infection cost African nations up to US$2billion per year (AGBIOS, 2003a).

The breeding of crops with increased resistance to disease has been a primary objective throughout the history of agriculture. Fortunately, the availability of new genetic engineering techniques has greatly improved the speed of development of disease resistant crops. Farmacule sees its disease resistance program as a positive adjunct to traditional agricultural techniques, and most importantly, its technology ensures controlled expression of genes, which are only activated upon command.