Plant products of biotechnology have been available in the market for some time now. These modified crops look like their traditional counterparts, but they possess special characteristics that make them better. These crops benefit both farmers and consumers. Farmers gain higher crop yields and have increased flexibility in management practices while consumers have “healthier crops” (i.e., crops grown with fewer pesticides and/or with healthier nutritional characteristics).

Plant products of biotechnology approved for food use have been modified to contain traits such as:

Insect resistance

Disease resistance

Herbicide tolerance

Altered nutritional profile

Enhanced storage life

Since the dawn of agriculture some 10,000 years ago, farmers have been developing varieties of plants to yield desired results. When you eat an ear of corn, for example, you can thank the prehistoric agriculturalists who started the process by selecting types of maize that retained their seed on the ear, leading to the development of corn on the cob. Variety development can be accomplished through many activities, from simply selecting plants with desirable characteristics for propagation to more complex molecular breeding techniques.

Plant breeding is the generation of variation, selection of plants and genetic stabilization (fixing) of traits to obtain varieties with reproducible desired characteristics. Its scientific underpinnings began to be understood in the mid-nineteenth century with the work of Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics. Using the pea plants in his garden, Mendel observed how traits were passed down to succeeding generations and he formulated the idea that specific traits were inherited as units in a predictable way. By the mid-twentieth century, scientists had established that traits are transmitted by genes in chromosomes, which store and express chemical information resulting in these characteristics. An understanding of genetic principles and their application to plant breeding technology has greatly accelerated the rate of improvement of crop plants. Researchers estimate that at least half of the several-fold yield increases attained in wheat and rice during the GreenRevolution resulted from the development and use of genetically improved varieties.

Plant traits are encoded in the DNA of their genes.