Man is almost absolutely dependent on plants for his food. Plants are also the major source, directly or indirectly, of most clothing, fuel, drugs, and construction materials. Considering the prime improvement of plants, it is not surprising that man have long been concerned with developing types better suited to satisfy their needs. Modification in the genetic make-up of crops may be expected to be quite rewarding in the future. Biotechnology is already becoming a powerful presence in our lives, yet most …..
Biotechnology, a new horizon for crop improvement:-
Shazia Anwer Bukhari, Dr. Zia-ur-Rehman, Sidra Ijaz
Man is almost absolutely dependent on plants for his food. Plants are also the major source, directly or indirectly, of most clothing, fuel, drugs, and construction materials. Considering the prime improvement of plants, it is not surprising that man have long been concerned with developing types better suited to satisfy their needs. Modification in the genetic make-up of crops may be expected to be quite rewarding in the future.
Biotechnology is already becoming a powerful presence in our lives, yet most of us know very little about this important scientific phenomenon. Some of us are somewhat put-off by technology, and sometimes frightened by it, but we cannot keep ignoring it.The purpose of this article is to explain the role and importance of biotechnology in crop improvement and to illustrate some of the positive aspects of biotechnology that are already benefiting or are expected to benefit, for the crop improvement. Biotechnology refers to the commercial population of genetic engineering to the development of new plants. Genetic engineering process is something like tearing out a page of the instruction manual for one living thing and gluing it into the manual of another. In the post we could breed using only closely related spp and it took many generations to introduce significant improvement. But genetic engineering allows researchers to shorten this time considerably by inserting only the gene responsible for desirable trait (e.g. pest or disease resistance, skin color or fruit size) into a plant, and selecting for that trait. This mimics the evolutionary process but in highly selective way.
Biotechnology involves managing biological processes make useful products. Everyday goods, such as breed, cheese and beer, all are made using biotechnology. Recent progress in explaining the science behind biological processes has significantly enhanced our ability to exploit them for the benefit of mankind and the environment.The principles of plant genetics, fruit established by Gregor Mendel in the 19th century, laid the foundations for the traditional plant breeding. But using biological knowledge, physical and chemically assisted ways of enhancing the speed, accuracy and scope of the selection process have developed, while more recent cell based techniques enables us to operate at the level of individual cell and their chromosomes. Plant biotechnology offers significant improvements in virtually every area of crop production and utilization with potential benefits to formers, the food industry, consumer and environment. Consumers can look forward to a wider choice of food products with improved physical and nutritional characteristics, produced using fewer chemical processes. The technology also has the potential to deliver significant health benefits, for example by removing allergenic and other toxic characteristics from much food stuff.
In crop-agriculture, DNA technology has enabled the scientist to come up with the novel germplasm resistant to diseased and insect pest and prolonged shelf-life and better quality of crop. In agriculture, through DNA technology, the plant diseases can be stopped by using modern diagnostics and gene silencing technique. Better crop varieties can be synthesized and bred using molecular markers. Biotechnology is receiving a great deal of attention as basic techniques to tailor crop plants as per specific requirement.
At a global level, plant biotechnology will play a key role in helping agricultural productivity and keep pace with the food demand of a rapidly growing world population by delivering continued yield improvement, and with developments such as built in drought and salinity tolerance adopting food crops from cell culture to generate new variability in the form of some clones and gemeto clones is becoming increasing important.
Medieval philosopher de toque Ville said,
“People will believe a simple lie in preference to a complicated truth”
For most people biotechnology is about as complicated as science gets. But biotechnology is something, people should be informed about it, because it is extremely potent in what is can do. Technical advances are already providing significant commercial benefits to growers, processors, and consumers. We believe the growth in the world population and in the demand for food and the clear consumer preference for environmentally sustainable agriculture will extend biotechnology’s role in food production. In further, this hopes that the successful application of various biotechnological tools offer great promise to crop plants.
