Modern biotechnology characteristically contemplates the natural processes of DNA imitation, breakage, ligation, and repair. This has given a better understanding of the mechanism of cell biology, in addition to its genetic procedure and how it can be useful to disciplines including medicine, plant, food science, and agrarian practices. Within agriculture, the major goal of modern biotechnology is to advance the quality, quantity, nourishment, taste, and shelf life of crops, eventually allowing shareholders to obtain greater productivity with reduced energy costs.
This comprises agricultural procedures dating
from antiquity, such as fermentation, and evolving disease-resistant plant
varieties through the process of crossbreeding. With the increase in the
consciousness regarding healthy living, the agricultural biotechnology market
valued $39,565.6 million in 2020, which is expected to grow at a 10.7% CAGR
during 2021 – 2030 and reach
$106,870.0 million.
GM Crops Increasing Efficiency of Farming
GM crops are majorly grown to help
agriculturalists avert crop damage in the event of a drought, excessive rain,
hail, and snow; extremely high or low temperature, or other uncontrollable
events. The three key traits of these crops are:
- Resistance
to insects
- Tolerance
to weedkillers
- Resistance
to plant diseases
For genetically modified crops resilient to
insects, lower amounts of pesticides have to be sprayed. GM crops that are
lenient with weedkillers help farmers regulate weeds without any damage to the
crops. Moreover, herbicide-tolerant crops do not require soil tilling, which is
normally done to eliminate weeds. This helps preserve the health of the soil
and lower the use of labor.
Genetic Engineering Offering Newer Avenues
for Farmers and Researchers
Plant transformation and genetic engineering
have played an essential role in crop improvement, by introducing useful
foreign genes. Nearly 525 different transgenic procedures in 32 crops have been
accepted for cultivation around the world. The acceptance of the transgenic
technology has surged crop yields, lessened pesticide and insecticide use,
diminished CO2 emissions, and reduced crop production costs. Though,
transgenic crops with foreign genes have toxicity and allergy risks and
environmental risks, such as chances of gene flow and herbicide resistance in
insects and weeds, which have encouraged the adoption of genome editing to
develop crops free from any foreign gene.
Biotechnology Has Tremendous Potential in
Feeding the World
Malnutrition can be directly related to hunger.
The Food and Agriculture Organization states that 854 million people all around
the globe are malnourished. Most of them who are underfed, children being the
most-noticeable sufferers, live in emerging economies. Undernutrition amplifies
the influence of every illness, including malaria and measles.
Biotechnology has a lot of potential for the evolving
world, as high-yielding crops will improve poverty mitigation, food security,
and ecological conservation. GM crops produce more harvest on a smaller land,
which will increase efficiency and may offer a means of sustainable development
and decrease hunger. Around 90% of the total 13.3 million biotech crop farmers
hail from developing countries. India, with 7.6 million hectares of land, is
fourth-largest country in terms of biotech crop cultivation.
Adoption of Biofuels Presents Further
Opportunities for Agricultural Biotechnology R&D
The global increase in the requirement for
biofuels is because they are cleaner than conventional fuels, emitting lower
amounts of contaminants. Therefore, the advanced nations of North America and
Europe are increasingly adopting biofuels, mainly produced via the usage of
biotechnology. The USDA has projected that 1 billion dry tons of biomass per
year is required to replace 30% of transportation fuels by volume with
biofuels. As per the agency, this amount could be produced by 2050, backed by
extensive R&D and sustainable farming practices.
Role of Biochips in Widening Application
Biotechnology in Agriculture
The progress of biochips offers a push to the
usage of biotechnology in agriculture, which includes proteomics, genomics,
computational biology, and pharmaceuticals. Advances in these areas have given
scientists new methods for unraveling the compound biochemical procedures
within cells, with the goal of comprehending and treating human diseases.
Simultaneously, the semiconductor business has
been gradually perfecting the art of microminiaturization. The integration of
these two fields has allowed biotechnologists to pack bulky sensing tools into
biochips. These miniaturized laboratories can perform numerous instantaneous
biochemical reactions, thereby allowing researchers to screen large numbers of
biological analytes for diseases, to find bioterrorism agents.
Hence, with advancements in technology,
agriculture has benefitted a great deal. Now, it is possible to produce larger
quantities on a considerably smaller piece of land and, that too, free from
weeds and diseases, credited to the widening scope of biotechnology in the
agrarian field.
Source: P&S Intelligence
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