Question

What is the impact of biotechnology on agriculture and other related fields?

Answer 1

Biotechnology is a broad area of biology, involving the use of living systems and organisms to develop or make products. It has been useful in many scientific related fields. It deals with the large-scale production and marketing of products and processes using the live organisms.

Complete answer:
Biotechnology is a branch of biology that deals with the technique of using live organisms or enzymes from organisms to produce products and processes useful to humans. It is useful in many processes like curd , bread or wine making that are all microbe mediated processes.
The applications of biotechnology include therapeutics, diagnostics, genetically modified crops for agriculture, processed food, bioremediation, waste treatment and energy production.

Agriculture field - Some of the applications of biotechnology in agriculture can decrease the amount of pesticide used. Bt toxin is produced by a bacteria called Bacillus thuringiensis. Bt toxin gene has been cloned from the bacteria and been expressed in plants to produce resistance to insects without the need for insecticides; in effect creating a bio- pesticides.

Medicine field- The recombination DNA technological processes have made an immense impact in the area of healthcare by enabling mass production of safe and more effective therapeutic drugs. Further, the recombination therapeutics do not induce unwanted immunological responses as is common in case of similar products isolated from non- human resources. At present, about 30 recombinant therapeutics have been approved for human use all over the world. In India, 12 have been marketed till now.

Animals field - Animals that have had their DNA manipulated to possess and express an extra gene are called transgenic genes. These animals have been due to biotechnology only. These animals are designed to increase our understanding of how genes contribute to the development of diseases. These animals are used to study how genes are regulated, vaccina formation and many more. Medicine that is required to treat human diseases can contain biological products, these animals use these products by introducing the portion of DNA which codes for a particular product.

DNA recombination- Branch of biotechnology named genetic engineering or recombinant DNA technology is used to alter the chemistry of genetic material such as DNA and RNA to introduce these into host organisms and thus change the phenotype of the host organism. Biotechnology also helps in maintaining chemical engineering processes to enable growth of only the desired microbes in large amounts for the manufacture of products like antibodies , vaccines and enzymes.

Note: "Biotechnology" is the term that was first used by Karl Ereky in 1919 which meant the production of products from the raw materials that aid with living organisms. In The 20th and 21st centuries, biotechnology has expanded to include new and diverse science such as genomics, recombinant gene technique, applied immunology and development of pharmaceutical therapies and diagnostic tests.