In Germany scientists are investigating genes in a huge way...

"...two years ago an international team of scientists decoded the entire genetic recipe of a plant - the Arabidopsis weed. They found that it consists of around 25,000 genes (by way of comparison: bacteria have around 4,000, yeast 6,000 and humans 34,000 genes), each of which makes a protein."

Now they are doing something very painstaking, but very worthwhile - creating new varieties by mutating genes one at a time...

"So far, in excess of 100,000 mutants have been created, said Dr Arno Krotzky, managing director. Some of the lines have a gene turned off while the rest have genes turned on. "Our goal is to investigate the function of all 25,000 genes in plants. This will require several hundred thousand experiments to investigate the complex interactions between genes, their functions and the regulation of these functions."