2.BIOTECHNOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS IN AGRICULTURE

Agro-chemical Based Agriculture

Agro-chemical Based Agriculture

Utilizes fertilizers, pesticides, and improved crop varieties with management practices, facing cost challenges in developing countries.

Organic Agriculture

Focuses on natural methods, avoids synthetic chemicals, promotes sustainable farming, and offers health and environmental benefits.

Genetically Engineered Crop-Based Agriculture

Involves genetic modification for desired traits, enhanced pest resistance, potential for higher yields, and is surrounded by GMO controversies.

Tissue Culture

Regenerates whole plants from explants, showcases totipotency, and requires sterile conditions, nutrient media, and growth regulators for plant propagation.

Micro-propagation

Produces genetically identical plants, aids in commercial food plant production, and utilizes meristem culture and protoplast isolation for new plant varieties.

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)

Altered organisms through genetic manipulation, examples include plants, bacteria, fungi, and animals, aiming to enhance yield and reduce chemical usage.

Genetic Modification in Plants

Enhances stress tolerance, reduces pesticide reliance, improves nutritional value, and offers tailor-made plants for various resources through GM technology.

Bt Cotton

Utilizes Bacillus thuringiensis toxin genes for pest resistance, with proteins targeting specific insects, and providing an effective and sustainable insect control method.

control cotton

• cryIAc and cryIIAb control cotton bollworms

• cryIAb controls corn borer

• (somaclones)

Production of genetically identical plants

Applications of Tissue Culture

Commercial scale production of food plants (tomato, banana, apple)

Recovery of healthy plants from diseased plants

Meristem Culture

Meristem as virus-free

Culturing meristems of banana, sugarcane, potato

Protoplast Isolation

• Isolation of naked protoplasts

• Fusion of protoplasts from different varieties to obtain hybrid protoplasts

Somatic Hybridisation

• Formation of somatic hybrids

Food Production

Let us take a look at the three options that can be thought for increasing _______(i) agro-chemical based agriculture (ii) organic agriculture; and (iii) genetically engineered crop-based agriculture.

Green Revolution

The _______ succeeded in tripling the food supply but yet it was not enough to feed the growing human population. Increased yields have partly been due to the use of improved crop varieties, but mainly due to the use of better management practices and use of agrochemicals (fertilisers and pesticides).

Agrochemicals

______ are often too expensive for farmers in the developing world.

Green Revolution

The ______ succeeded in tripling the food supply but was not enough to feed the growing human population.

Tissue culture

Scientists discovered in the 1950s that whole plants could be regenerated from explants in a test tube under sterile conditions in special nutrient media. This technology is known as ______.

Totipotency

This capacity to generate a whole plant from any cell/explant is called ______.

Nutrient medium

It is important to stress here that the ______ must provide a carbon source such as sucrose and also inorganic salts, vitamins, amino acids, and growth regulators like auxins, cytokinins, etc.

Micro-propagation

This method of producing thousands of plants through tissue culture is called ______.

Somaclones

Each of these plants will be genetically identical to the original plant from which they were grown, i.e., they are ______.

Tissue culture

Many important food plants like tomato, banana, apple, etc., have been produced on a commercial scale using this method. Try to visit a _____ laboratory with your teacher to better understand and appreciate the process.

Meristem

Even if the plant is infected with a virus, the _____ (apical and axillary) is free of the virus. Hence, one can remove the _____ and grow it in vitro to obtain virus-free plants.

Protoplasts

Scientists have even isolated single cells from plants and after digesting their cell walls have been able to isolate naked _____ (surrounded by plasma membranes).

Protoplasts

Isolated ______ from two different varieties of plants can be fused to get hybrid protoplasts.

Hybrid protoplasts

Protoplasts from different plant varieties fused together to form ______.

Somatic hybrids

These hybrids resulting from the fusion of protoplasts are called ______.

Somatic hybridisation

The process of creating somatic hybrids by fusing protoplasts is known as ______.

Pomato

A hybrid plant resulting from the fusion of protoplasts from tomato and potato, combining characteristics of both plants, is called a ______.

Genetics

Is there any alternative path that our understanding of ______ can show so that farmers may obtain maximum yield from their fields?

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO)

Plants, bacteria, fungi, and animals whose genes have been altered by manipulation are called ______.

Abiotic stresses

Genetic modification has made crops more tolerant to ______ (cold, drought, salt, heat).

Pesticides

Genetic modification has reduced reliance on chemical ______ (pest-resistant crops).

Post harvest losses

GM technology helped to reduce ______.

Efficiency of mineral usage

GM technology increased ______ by plants to prevent early exhaustion of soil fertility.

Nutritional value

GM technology enhanced ______ of food, for example, golden rice enriched with Vitamin 'A'.

Pest resistant plants

Production of ______ could decrease the amount of pesticide used in agriculture.

Bt toxin

______ is produced by a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis and has been cloned and expressed in plants to provide resistance to insects.

Biotechnology

______ deals with industrial scale production of biopharmaceuticals and biologicals using genetically modified microbes, fungi, plants, and animals.

Green Revolution

The Green Revolution succeeded in tripling the food supply but was not enough to feed the growing human population due to the limitations of ______.

Tissue Culture

______ means that whole plants could be regenerated from explants, i.e., any part of a plant taken out and grown in a test tube, under sterile conditions in special nutrient media.

Bt Toxin

The Bt toxin protein exists as inactive protoxins but becomes active once an insect ingests it due to the alkaline pH of the gut, which solubilizes the ______ crystals.

Toxin

The activated _____ binds to the surface of midgut epithelial cells and create pores that cause cell swelling and lysis and eventually cause death.

Genes

Specific Bt toxin _____ were isolated from Bacillus thuringiensis and incorporated into several crop plants such as cotton.

Crop

The choice of _____ depends upon the crop and the targeted pest, as most Bt toxins are insect-group specific.

cryIAc

The toxin is coded by a gene _____ named cry.

cryIIAb

For example, the proteins encoded by the genes cryIAc and _____ control the cotton bollworms.