AgbioInvestor’s free-to-access service AgbioInvestor GM Monitor has identified the following GM trait approvals up to May 2025. Expanded details on these recently approved traits, as well as for approvals dating back as far as 1992, can be found on AgbioInvestor’s GM Monitor website.

The TELA Maize Project recently received approval for import use, as food/feed, and for commercial use in cultivation for the MON 810 genetic event in Ethiopia.

The African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) is coordinating the TELA Maize Project, a public-private partnership, launched in 2018 led, consisting of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), an internationally funded, non-profit, scientific research, training and development organisation, and Bayer Crop Science (Bayer), a private agricultural company. The project builds on progress made from a decade of breeding work under the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) Project to address persistent issues such as pest infestations and changing climatic conditions. Its goal is commercialising transgenic drought-tolerant and insect-protected maize varieties, under the varietal name TELA, without altering the nutritional composition or safety of the crop and enhancing food security in sub-Saharan Africa. AATF and its partners are pursuing the regulatory approval and dissemination of maize seeds across seven target countries in Africa – Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda – with the transgenic technology itself, owned by Bayer Crop Science (formerly Monsanto), being licensed royalty-free to the partners for use in the project.

In Nigeria, the development of the improved varieties was led by the Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR) Samaru, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria through the TELA Maize public-private partnership coordinated by the AATF. Under the TELA maize project the Federal Government granted an environmental release approval for GM maize containing the genetic events MON 87460 and MON 89034 in 2021 (see AgbioNews Oct 12, 2021) and authorised the commercial release of four insect-resistant and drought-tolerant GM maize varieties containing these events early in 2024 (AgbioNews Jan 15, 2024). The approvals were part of the National Assembly of Nigeria’s commitment to developing in-house capacity for the advancement and utilisation of biotechnology innovations in crop improvement in Nigeria (AgbioNews Sep 28, 2023), supporting the Agenda 2050 goal and the acceptance of Nigeria into the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) (AgbioNews Aug 30, 2021) as well as the passage of the Plant Variety Protection Bill 2021. In Ethiopia, the National Variety Release Committee (NVRC) recently approved the commercial release of GM insect-resistant and drought-tolerant maize developed as part of the TELA Maize Project (AgbioNews Mar 7, 2025) based on MON 810. TELA maize varieties have also been approved in Kenya, and South Africa.

MON 810 is a well established GM genetic event, containing an insect resistant trait which was conferred through microparticle bombardment and offers lepidopteran resistance through the addition of the Cry1Ab delta-endotoxin. It first received cultivation approval in 1995 in the USA and has since been approved in at least 11 further countries, including both cultivation and food/feed use approvals in the EU. MON 810 is the only GM maize trait used in the EU, with Spain and Portugal cultivating a total of 65,963 hectares of GM maize in 2024. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) recently renewed the authorisation for MON 810 for import as food and animal feed for another 10 years (AgbioNews Jul 17, 2024).