The flue-cured and Burley tobacco industries have thus far relied solely on the intrinsic gene-pool of the tobacco plant itself for traits that enhance yield, disease resistance, leaf quality etc. Meanwhile, over the last 25 years the tobacco plant has been widely used as a convenient research species for developing transgenic (genetically modified; GM) strategies that employ genes from other sources for crop improvement, resulting in the demonstration of many new performance and input traits in tobacco. Given the considerable benefits that GM technology has brought to other crops, there is increasing interest in assessing the potential of those advances in traditional tobacco. We are conducting a comprehensive survey of what GM technology can do in tobacco, and how/whether GM tobacco could be safely and securely produced in the open-field environment without compromising the production of the conventional, non-GM crop. We anticipate that this information will be valuable to growers and their organizations as a base of knowledge on the status of GM technologies that might be used in modifying traditional Burley and flue-cured varieties in the future. Our progress to-date has comprised extensive literature searches in several scientific/technical databases, followed by sorting and filtering of the many thousands of publications to remove replicated material. A classification format has been designed that will enable the final search results to be interpreted easily in terms of what traits have been demonstrated through GM technology, how effective they are, whether they are already in commercial tobacco varieties, etc. Patents and government-regulated field trials with GM tobacco are also contributing useful information, and we have conducted interviews with industry and growers. Our findings will be summarized in a report which will be made available to all interested persons on-line.