During the 1960's perenial weeds were a significant and uncontrollable problem which often reduced crop yield for many farmers. In response to this problem and recognising a potential new commercial opportunity Dr. Phil Hamm, at Monsanto Company, developed greenhouse screens to uncover new lead structures with herbicidal activity against major perenial weeds.

A wide variety of phosphonylated amino acid derivatives were tested uncovering two leads, in the early '60s, with interesting greenhouse activity, but their performance was not sufficient to warrant commercialization as herbicides. A large number of structurally related analogues, such as N-substituted analogues of these compounds, were created and their activity evaluated as a follow-up to these leads, but no significant activty improvement was attained throughout 1969. Many closely related ananlogues were prepared, evaluated and found to be totally inactive.

Dr. Franz began work on the project in late 1969. While several approaches were attempted simultaneously, one operating hypothesis that he developed was that the herbicide activty of the two derivatives was due to a, possibly more active, metabolic intermediate, such as glyphosate. He attempted several possible synthetic procedures and eventually managed to prepare glyphosate from chloromethylphosphonic acid. By the summer of 1970 this new material had been evaluated showing its commercial potential. Commercial lunch came in 1974 in the form of ROUNDUP - the monoisopropylamine salt of glyphosate - which was and stil is marketed by the Monsato Company.