Biotechnology

4 Pages 1121 Words

Biotechnology & Agriculture


For centuries, many techniques aimed at the improvement in agriculture have been utilized. Today, applied plant science has three overall goals: to increase the crop yield, improve crop quality, and reduce the cost of production. Biotechnology has served a major role in meeting these goals. However, progress has been slower than with medical and other areas of research. Since plants are genetically more and physiologically more complex than single-cell organisms such as bacteria and yeast, the necessary technologies are developing more slowly (Williams, 98).
In one area of plant research, scientists are exploring ways to use genetic modification to create desirable characteristics on food crops. Similarly, agronomists, those who deal with field-crop production and soil management, are looking for ways to harden plants against negative environmental conditions such as soil salinity, drought, alkaline earth metals and anaerobic (lacking oxygen) soil conditions (Stevens, 76).
Genetic engineering methods to improve fruit vegetable crops characteristics are also being explored. These characteristics include taste, texture, size, color, acidity or sweetness, and the ripening process. Methods being explored are a potentially superior strategy to the traditional method of cross breeding. Also, new fermentation applications of biotechnology involving dairy products, beverages, cocoa are resulting in new foods and new food producers (Schor, 54).
Research in this area of agricultural biotechnology is complicated by the fact that most of a crop’s traits are encoded by many genes working together not by one gene alone. Therefore, one must first identify all of the genes that function as a set to express a particular trait. This knowledge can then be applied to altering the genetic makeup of
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commercially important food crops (Stevens, 78). For example, it will be possible to transfe...