Genetically Modified Crops: A Pivotal Endeavor in Biotechnology

Abstract

Transgenic technology has significantly contributed to the genetic improvement of crop plants by improving important agronomic traits like insect/pest resistance, disease resistance, herbicide tolerance, abiotic stress tolerance, and quality improvement. Conventional breeding programs are time consuming and laborious involving screening thousands of progenies for the development of a new hybrid variety. Genetic engineering is a precise tool to develop a new variety in a short duration. Genetically Modified Crops have been used for expression of recombinant proteins of high therapeutic value, monoclonal antibodies, nutraceuticals, edible vaccines, and improved saccharification efficiency of biofuel crops for bioethanol production. The agricultural productivity is limited by global climate changes and unfavorable abiotic and biotic factors posing challenges for crop scientists to meet the rising demand for global food supply. Developing climate-resilient crops will bring more land under agriculture and more vegetation for carbon sequestration thereby annulling global warming. This chapter provides an insight into the principles, advantages, and limitations of the methods used in genetic transformation and the advancements in genome editing, agronomic traits improved in Genetically Modified Crops, potential applications of transgenic technology in biopharming and bioethanol production, biosafety and regulation of transgenic crops, and the challenges in the development of Genetically Modified Crops.