Benefits Of Using Biotechnology In Agriculture

By Author: Jaye
Total Articles: 7

Over few decades, biotechnology has seen effective growth in cultivating healthy crops in the farm land. Mainly in developed countries corn, soybeans and cotton constitute the predominant biotech crops. Biotech benefits bring certain positive environmental advantages and prevent the erosion of as much as 1 billion tons of topsoil annually.

Here are few benefits of using biotechnology in cultivating crops.

More Crop Productivity

In the agriculture field, biotech methodologies have helped to increase the crop productivity by introducing some disease resistance and increased drought tolerance to the crops. Additionally, genes from naturally drought-resistant seeds can be used to increase drought tolerance in many crop varieties. For example, Cornell University has developed two varieties of papaya seeds i.e. SunUp & Rainbow. By using these seeds farmers cultivated more papaya in the year 2013. This proves that biotechnology plays a major role in productivity.

Increased Crop Protection

From past few years farmers are utilizing the crop protection technologies since they need to find the cost-effective solution for pest control problem which was uncontrolled. To avoid this problem, farmers started to use protein from soil bacterium i.e. Bacillus thuringiensis is used from decades as the active ingredient for some natural insecticides. Also an effective crop protection technology are used to control pests in a better way and cheaply available than any other technologies.

Micro- propagation for plants

Framers were facing major problems from pest and diseases which was out of control. Mainly for banana plants it cannot be solved through pesticides. Further disease will spread to the new banana plant that springs up could be diseased as well. To overcome this problem, Biotechnology research centre introduced Micro-propagation method to solve this problem. This method involves heat-treating technique to destroy infective organisms and then tissue-culture generates new disease free plants.

Biofortification Technology for Rich Nutrients

Biofortification technology involves the process of developing nutritionally enhanced crop plants. This gene is responsible for enhanced nutritional levels for crops through conventional breeding technique. Farmers use this technique mainly to increase protein content in maize and iron content in rice. In 1989, American university has developed a nutritionally enhanced potato with double quantity than normal potato.

Improvements in Food Processing

Biotech methodology in improving the food processing involves genetic engineering technology. It is used to replace calf rennet in cheese making. This benefit includes increased purity, reliable supply and 50% less reduction to yield high efficiency.
As far as we utilize the biotech methods, the size of the farm is immaterial. So no matter whether you cultivate crops in backyard or in a large farm. The key is to have a biorational method for cultivation to grow not only healthier plants, but also to protect our crops for future generation.