21st Century Agri-Bio Technology

Among other things, scientists are exploring whether it is possible to increase cancer-fighting ingredients in food, to harvest organs from animals for transplantation to humans, to deliver vaccines in fruit and to rescue threatened species such as the American chestnut tree. While many future applications will continue to be aimed at solving age-old agricultural problems like protecting crops from pests, genetic engineering may create new opportunities—and challenges—for the future.

Scientists’ ability to alter the traits of plants and animals by moving genes from one organism into another has come out of the laboratory into mainstream domestic agriculture. To date, scientists have largely used this technology to create crops that benefit farmers, such as corn and cotton capable of fending off destructive pests, and soybeans resistant to chemical herbicides. Now, however, in numerous universities and company laboratories, the power of biotechnology is being used to modify agricultural plants and animals for a wider array of purposes.

Public attitudes about biotechnology will be affected both by the adequacy of the regulatory response and the perceived benefits and risks of the particular products brought to market. In that context, understanding the potential uses of this technology can help us anticipate and prepare for the coming questions. Whether today’s research projects become tomorrow’s products will depend not only on continued scientific progress, but also on addressing the public’s concerns about the technology and on the realities of the marketplace.

Today, recombinant DNA technology is widely used to create transgenic bacteria that produce useful proteins, such as human insulin to treat diabetes, or chymosin, an enzyme widely used in making cheese.

For animals, scientists use a variety of different techniques to insert the isolated gene into the DNA. As with plants, they must carefully test the modified animal to be sure the trait is present and stable, and does not have an adverse effect on the animal.

Some scientists argue that modern biotechnology is just the next step in a progression of increasingly scientific efforts by humans to selectively breed better food crops and domesticated animals. Other experts, however, take the view that recombinant DNA technology is very different from anything we have done before.

Over the centuries of crop cultivation and domestication of animals, the process of artificial (human) selection and selective breeding has created a diversity of food crops and animals with a wide variety of traits. For example, kale, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and Brussels sprouts are all vegetable varieties derived from a single species. Hybridization—the process of breeding genetically different parents with contrasting characteristics to produce a hybrid offspring with the useful characteristics of both parents—has resulted in higher yields and more disease resistant crops. For example, improved varieties of rice with significantly higher yields than traditional varieties have helped meet the developing world’s food needs.


While modern biotechnology falls within the long tradition of the human manipulation of the genetic materials of plants and animals, it also greatly expands the ability of scientists to move traits across species lines, and makes possible for the first time the ability to move genes across distant species, phylas or even kingdoms.

It is precisely because the technology is so potentially powerful and capable of novel uses that a number of issues have been raised. These include concerns about the safety of food made from genetically modified plants and animals and concerns about the impact on the environment, as well as the ethical and moral implications of the technology.

Today, genetic engineering provides a set of new tools for agriculture. In addition to continuing research and development on basic crops, there are also hundreds of potential novel uses for biotechnology being researched across the entire agricultural spectrum—from trees to grass and flowers, mammals, fish, and even insects.

The expanding number of genome maps reveals striking genetic commonality among living organisms. For example, some 10 percent of human genes are clearly related to fruit fly and worm genes; about 99 percent of the overall DNA sequence in humans is similar to that of chimpanzees. To date, scientists and researchers have sequenced forty-eight genomes. These include not only the human genome, but also the flowering mustard plant (Arabidopsis thaliana), a plant referred to in this report because of its extensive utilization in agricultural biotechnology research, as well as the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), pathogenic bacteria and the nematode.

It is not just science but also the marketplace that will ultimately determine, which biotechnological applications are successfully commercialized.

Biotechnology is a tool. It is not the only tool for addressing a particular set of problems, and it is not necessarily a better tool than conventional, or other, approaches or applications. It is beyond the scope of this report to weigh the costs and benefits of any particular agricultural technology or to compare the relative merits of potential alternatives.

Whether today's research projects become tomorrow's products depends on many factors. Social, political, regulatory, legal, environmental and economic questions need to be debated. Before we make these kinds of decisions as a society—in our respective roles as consumers, regulators, producers, commentators and shareholders—we should understand where the technology is pointed.

Industry and university scientists are applying the new tools of biotechnology across a broad range of plants and animals for a wide variety of possible future uses. Much of this research remains at early stages. The broad scope of current research suggests challenges ahead. As new products emerge, state and federal regulators tasked with the responsibility to protect the environment and ensure the safety of food are likely to face novel questions. Public attitudes about biotechnology will be affected both by the adequacy of the regulatory response and the perceived benefits and risks of the particular products brought to market. In that context, understanding the potential uses of this technology can help us anticipate and prepare for these coming questions. Whether today's research projects become tomorrow's products will depend not only on continued scientific progress, but also on addressing the public's concerns about the technology and on the realities of the marketplace. (www.asifjmir.com)