Application of Biotechnology in Agriculture and Food Production

The use of biotechnology to produce new varieties of agricultural crops has been adopted widely throughout the world. In agriculture and food production, biotechnology has been part of a continuum - a refinement of genetic enhancement techniques begun thousands of years ago with the domestication of wild plants and animals.

Over time, the application of traditional biotechnology practices, such as hybridisation and cross breeding of plants and animals with desirable characteristics, has created agricultural crops and animals with increased nutritional qualities, increased yields, improved colour and size.

The majority of the commercially grown plants (such as broadacre crops, vegetables, fruits and flowers) and animals (cows, pigs, chickens and aquaculture fish) that exist today, have been bred utilising some form of biotechnology.

Modern biotechnology techniques, such as genetic modification (GM), enable scientists to very precisely alter the genetic make up of the plant or animal. Modifications usually involve changing one gene of the 30,000 - 50,000 odd genes that make up an organism. These techniques have also been used for decades to alter the yeast used in traditional fermentation techniques to make bread, cheese and beer.

More recently, GM techniques have been used to produce crop varieties that are more resistant to pests and disease and/or increased vigour (growth) with the intention of improving crop yields and reducing the amount of chemical (pesticides/herbicides) sprayed on crops. Herbicide tolerance (HT) has consistently been the dominant GM trait modified into crops followed by insect resistance (IR). Additional work is currently focusing on tolerance to stressors such as drought and salinity, as well as increasing the nutritional value of crops.

To date the most widely grown GM crops are GM canola, soybeans, corn and cotton. The USA, Argentina, Canada, Brazil and China are leading the way in terms of the adoption of GM crops.