Bio-insecticides, transgenic plats pest resistant, bio-fungicides can eliminate and reduce use of chemical pesticides.
Biotechnology is the application of scientific techniques to modify and improve plants, animals, and microorganisms to enhance their value. Agricultural biotechnology is the area of biotechnology involving applications to agriculture. Modern biotechnology represents unique applications of science that can be used for the betterment of society through development of crops with improved nutritional quality, resistance to pests and diseases, and reduced cost of production. Biotechnology, in the form of genetic engineering, is a facet of science that has the potential to provide important benefits if used carefully and ethically. Society should be provided with a balanced view of the fundamentals of biotechnology and genetic engineering, the processes used in developing transgenic organisms, the types of genetic material used, and the benefits and risks of the new technology.
Bio-insecticides, transgenic plats pest resistant, bio-fungicides can eliminate and reduce use of chemical pesticides.
In theory, biotechnology could be used to prevent pest problems and thus reduce the need for pest management and pesticide use. Since the beginning of agriculture, plant breeders have developed crop varieties that were resistant to or tolerant of particular pests. For example, cotton varieties with long, twisted bracts (called frego bracts) around the bolls are resistant to boll weevil damage and solid stemmed wheat varieties are not damaged by the wheat stem sawfly. The tools of biotechnology could be used to make plant breeding easier and quicker.
However, genetic engineering has c tended to move agriculture in the opposite direction, towards maintaining or increasing present pesticide use patterns. Almost 35 percent of the almost 500 permits for field tests of genetically engineered crop plants approved by the U . S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) since 1987 are for tests of plants that have been genetically engineered to be resistant to an herbicide.2 This means that the crop plant is~not damaged by the herbicide, so that it can be used to kill weeds growing with the crop without causing economic losses. The use of these genetically engineered crop plants will increase the use of the particular herbicide for which tolerance has been engineered.
Thousands of tons of pesticides are used to control insects. Using modern biotechnology, scientists and farmers have removed the need for the use of some of these chemicals. Insect-protected plants are developed by introducing a gene into a plant that produces a
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Dear Hussein,
Agricultural biotechnology is normally used to increase productivity in plant production. This technique includes both plant improvement genetically for productivity and control its harmful organisms. So, pest management and pesticide use will mitigate for amended plants by using biotechnology.
Hi,
The best agricultural biotechnology is the knowledge of the both (i) ecology and “physiology” of the soil and the (ii) interaction between the soil (and all the organisms that it contains) and plants. These questions are not answered. Actual experiments demonstrate that this approach does not reduce the yield of our productions, increasing however the manpower needs. This is a problem, but the major difficulty is the lobbying of the chemical companies that fight against this ancestral view of agriculture… Christian
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