Biotechnology in Agriculture

The term refers to agriculture cultivation of plants, animals, food, fuel, clothing, medicines and other products that are essential for our life. Conventional agriculture is practiced in different ways by different people around the world. It is well known that agricultural products have a different quality from one place to another and some agricultural products are not considered in some parts of the world, when they are abundant in the world. This difference is due to several factors, such as climatic conditions, climatic conditions, availability of water, the mineral content in the soil and, last but not least political and geographical factors. Another factor that led to the development of modern agriculture is the need to increase the efficiency of plant products, diseases, pests, drought resistance in plant products.



Biotechnology has emerged traditional science to solve the problems in all aspects of life, improvement of genetic engineering of plants. In large applications of biotechnology, agricultural biotechnology. This implies the development of the plants so that the plants produce higher yields of products such as grains, vegetables, fruits, leaves (green) and can withstand extreme conditions, such as temperature, high-salinity water and high humidity in the air. In addition, plants can produce according to our needs, and we can control features like color, taste, smell and size of fruits and vegetables. All this is possible thanks to the exploitation of the properties of DNA molecules called miracle (From Oxy ribose nucleic acid). Since the discovery of DNA, scientists have developed solutions to overcome the problems in agriculture, altering the genetic structure of the DNA.Cultures whose DNA has been modified are called "transgenic" or "GM crops", and derivatives of these plants are called genetically modified plant products. So how is this done? All living things, including animals, plants, bacteria, fungi and micro-organisms have DNA that guides their development and how to survive. This DNA is in turn divided into "genes" that are specific to the role and function of a living organism. This means that if the gene is changed, are changing every individual "typical" or "function" of the body or any part of this organization. Same principle is applied in agricultural biotechnology as well. If we seek to improve the color of the flowers produced by a plant, you can modify the genetic structure of a gene that is responsible for this color. This procedure can be performed with some plants, another example would be to increase the sweetness of the fruit, in this way responsible for the production of fructose gene is altered. Fructose is a sugar that gives the sweetness of fruit, in theory, if we change the gene to produce more fructose, and fruit becomes softer.The biggest breakthrough in agriculture was when the "Flavr Savr" tomato was introduced to the U.S. market May 21, 1994. This discovery led to the foundation for the preservation of fruit and vegetables without a refrigerator for several days. An enzyme called Polyglacturonase is responsible for dissolving the pectin in the cell wall. A gene complementary to the gene can be cloned Polyglacturonase using antisense RNA technology. The antisense gene to block Polyglacturonase produced by the gene and thus arrest decay of fruits and vegetables. As the cell wall by enzymatic decomposition is produced in very small quantities, delay deterioration of fruits and vegetables increase. Now this revolutionary technology saves millions of dollars each year to reduce wastage of fruits and vegetables during transportation.We speak very few applications from the huge database of biotechnology applications in agriculture. Although we have seen that the benefits of biotechnology, while everything in this world has its advantages and disadvantages and biotechnology is no exception to this. No scientific community has talked a lot about the potential risks of biotechnology to us and our environment, but so far there is little evidence from scientific studies that the risks are real. At the same time, experience the range of services offered by these plants, beyond those that have arisen from traditional agricultural practices.