BT403 Official Handouts

1. Agriculture Biotechnology Introduction

Biotechnology: it is use of biological processes, organisms, or systems. It is defined as a set of tools that uses living organisms (or parts of organisms) to make or modify a product, improve plants, trees or animals, or develop microorganisms for specific uses.

Benefits of Biotechnology

It is used for all these three purposes

HEAL THE WORLD

Biotechnology heals the world by creating more precise tools for disease detection and by reducing rates of infectious disease.

FUEL THE WORLD

It fuels the world by using biofuels, improving manufacturing process efficiency and by reducing the use of and reliance on petrochemicals

FEED THE WORLD

It feeds the world by generating higher crop yields, using biotech crops and by improving food and crop oil content. Agriculture Biotechnology is collection of scientific techniques to improve plants, animals and microorganisms, to manipulate the genetic makeup, for the production or processing of agricultural products, to Increase agricultural productivity, to enhance breeders’ ability to make improvements in crops and livestock and to enable improvements that are not possible with traditional crossing of related species alone. Agricultural biotechnology is the term used in crop and livestock improvement through biotechnology tools. This monograph will focus only on agricultural crop biotechnology. Biotechnology encompasses a number of tools and elements of conventional breeding techniques, bioinformatics, microbiology, molecular genetics, biochemistry, plant physiology, and molecular biology.

2. History of agriculture biotechnology

A brief history

•  It is practiced for so long about 8-10,000 years ago to improve organisms by: Selection and breeding
•  Selection: it is selection and saving of the best looking plants and seeds, the selection features are: Faster growth, higher yields, pest and disease resistance, larger seeds, or sweeter fruits
•  Breeding: it is done by artificially mating, cross-pollination, and desirable characteristics from different parent plants could be combined in the offspring. Superior plants are selected and breed them to create new and improved varieties of different crops.
•  In 1990 -The first food product of biotechnology (an enzyme used in cheese production and a yeast used for baking) appeared on the market.
•  In1995, farmers have been growing genetically engineered (GE) crops.
•  In 2003, 7 million farmers in 18 countries more than 85 percent of them resource-poor farmers in the developing world were planting biotech crops.

Why is agricultural biotechnology important?

In a world where 7 Billion people, living mostly in rural areas, go hungry every day, Food demand is set to double in the next thirty years and arable land is limited, Advances in agriculture are critical if we are to reduce hunger and promote growth and development in a socially acceptable and environmentally sustainable way.

Benefits of agriculture biotechnology

Agricultural biotechnology has been used to protect crops from disastrous diseases. Biotech crops can make farming more profitable by increasing crop quality and may in some cases increase yields. Biotech crops may provide enhanced quality traits such as increased levels of beta-carotene in rice to aid in reducing vitamin A deficiencies. Agriculture biotechnology produces herbicidetolerant crops. The tools of agricultural biotechnology have been invaluable for researchers in helping to understand the basic biology of living organisms. Biotechnology has helped to make both insect pest control and weed management safer and easier while safeguarding crops against diseases.

3. Applications of agriculture biotechnology I

Genetic engineering:

Genetic engineering is also called genetic modification, is the direct manipulation of an organism's genes using biotechnology. All crops improved with transferred DNA to date have been developed to aid farmers to increase productivity by reducing crop damage from weeds, diseases or insects. It inserts fragments of DNA into chromosomes of cells, uses tissue culture to regenerate the cells into a whole organism with Different genetic