In the field of agriculture, biotechnology has contributed to crop improvement by developing salt and drought resistant crops, developing crop varieties which can fix atmospheric nitrogen, improving crop varieties for higher photosynthetic efficiency, improving the quality and quantity of storage proteins, and production of high yielding hybrid seeds.
Biotechnology improves crop insect resistance, enhances crop herbicide tolerance and facilitates the use of more environmentally sustainable farming practices.
Biotechnology feeds the world by generating higher crop yields with fewer inputs, lowering volumes of agricultural chemicals required by crops-limiting the run-off of these products into the environment, using biotech crops that need fewer applications of pesticides and that allow farmers to reduce tilling farmland, developing crops with enhanced nutrition profiles that solve vitamin and nutrient deficiencies, producing foods free of allergens and toxins such as mycotoxin, and improving food and crop oil content to help improve cardiovascular health.
Circumventing further, it has contributed to crop protection through development of disease resistant varieties of transgenic plants which offer protection against virus, bacteria, fungi, nematodes and insects, development of herbicide resistant plants and development of recombinant DNA based diagnostic reagents for early identification and treatment of viral, bacterial and fungal diseases.
Tissue culture techniques have helped in the propagation of forest plants such as bamboo, teak, Eucalyptus, etc. and economically important plants such as banana, Brassica and even biofuel.
Biotechnology has also helped in the production of single cell proteins and biofertilizers
In the field of energy, biotechnology has helped in the conversion of cellulosic and agricultural waste to produce fuels such as ethanol and butanol by cloning active enzyme systems for their efficient degradation and subsequent fermentation.
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Biotechnology has helped in the production of biogas from agricultural and animal wastes by engineering methanogenic bacteria. It has also helped in the production of oil producing bacteria.
Biotechnology has also played an important role in waste treatment by developing high capacity bacteria to degrade cellulose and lignin, to degrade metals and cyanide, to clean up oil, to destroy TNT (i.e. Trinitrotoluene, a useful explosive material with convenient handling properties), to degrade chlorinated organic wastes, etc.
Thus, biotechnology has contributed to the welfare of humanity in many and varied ways. Biotechnology has become an important and integral part of any life science today.
Biotechnology provides farmers with tools that can make production cheaper and more manageable. For example, some biotechnology crops can be engineered to tolerate specific herbicides, which make weed control simpler and more efficient.
Biotechnology in agriculture has found application in rDNA technology, tissue culture, somatic hybridization, embryo rescue, molecular diagnostics, etc. All of these tend to increase productivity in agriculture and protect crops from damage or infestation.
Terms Defined
Transgenic plants: plants into which genes from another species have been deliberately introduced by genetic engineering.
The bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens carrying the required gene is often used to infect and transmit the gene to cultured plant tissue from which a transgenic plant can be regenerated.
Recombinant DNA: DNA produced by joining together in vitro genes from different sources or which has in some way been modified in vitro to introduce novel genetic information. Or, DNA produced as a result of natural genetic recombination.
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