Monsanto widespread unrest and farmer suicides. Monsanto was one focus of protests with respect to the price and yields of Bt seed. In 2005, the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee, the Indian regulatory authority, released a study on field tests of certain Bt cotton strains in AP and ruled that Monsanto could not market those strains in AP because of poor yields. At about the same time, the state agriculture minister barred the company from selling Bt cotton seed, because Monsanto refused a request by the state government to provide pay about Rs 4.5 crore (about one million US$) to indebted farmers
Monsanto was the first method for the catalytic production of pure chiral compounds. Knowles' team designed the "first industrial process to chirally synthesize an important compound"—L‑dopa, which is used to treat Parkinson's disease. In 2001, Knowles and Ryōji Noyori won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In the mid-1960s, chemists at Monsanto developed the Monsanto process for making acetic acid, which until 2000 was the most widely used production method. In 1964, Monsanto chemists invented AstroTurf (initially ChemGrass). In the 1960s and 1970s, Monsanto was a producer of Agent Orange for United States Armed Forces operations in Vietnam, and settled out of