Biotechnology in Agriculture: Key Applications and Significance to Know

The current acceleration of biological technological advancements has provided insights that are increasingly applied to agricultural concerns. Biotechnological advances of this nature give critical ways to address current and future concerns ranging from food security to environmental change.

Fremont, CA: Modern biotechnology deals with the natural processes of DNA replication, breakage, ligation, and repair. These have given researchers a greater understanding of cell biology's mechanics and heredity process and how these can be applied to fields such as medicine, plant and food science, and agricultural practices. Let's explore the significance of biotechnology in agriculture in detail.

Agricultural Practices Using Biotechnology

Biotechnology is the science of using biological processes to create and manufacture items employed in many aspects of human existence.

The primary purpose of current biotechnology in agriculture is to increase products' quality, quantity, nutrition, taste, and shelf life, allowing stakeholders to gain higher yields at lower energy costs. This covers agricultural methods that date back to antiquity, such as fermentation and more recent examples of crossbreeding to generate disease-resistant plant varieties.

Modern strategies for improving agricultural practices through biotechnological progress include transgenic techniques, including inserting foreign DNA strands into the host genome to increase crop productivity. In 2004, almost 80 million hectares of land in the United States, South America, China, Canada, and South Africa grew transgenic crops. Herbicide tolerance, virus and insect resistance, and natural stress tolerance are the most sought-after target features for improving agricultural yields in transgenic crops.

According to data in a report on the Global Status of Commercialized Biotech Crops, the bulk of transgenic seed now in use was generated and marketed by private biotechnology businesses.

The research emphasized the rapid growth of transgenic crop use in recent decades, stating that the global area of transgenic crops exceeded 1 million hectares in 1996, increased to nearly 40 million hectares during the next four years, and reached 90 million hectares by 2005. Companies' involvement and the rapid implementation of biotechnological development are demonstrated by such extensive utilization.