The term farmland near bangalore refers to cultivation of plants, animals for food, fuels, clothes, medicine and other products which are essential for our living. Conventional agriculture is practiced in several ways by different people around the globe. It is well known that agricultural products have different quality from place to place and some of the agricultural products are not seen in some parts of the world, while they are abundant in the rest of the world. This difference is due to several factors including climatic conditions, weather, availability of water, mineral content in the soil, and last but not least political and geographical factors. Another factor which led to the development of modern agriculture is the need to increase yield of plant products, disease, pest, drought resistance in plant products.
Biotechnology has emerged from traditional science to overcome the problems in every aspect of life, from plant breeding to genetic engineering. Out of the vast applications of Biotechnology, Agricultural Biotechnology is one. It involves the development of plants in such a way that, plants produce high yields of products such as grains, vegetables, fruits, leaves (leafy vegetables) and they can tolerate extreme conditions such as high temperature, high salinity in water and high humidity in the air. Furthermore we can produce plant products as per our needs, and we can control the features like color, taste, odor and size of fruits and vegetables. All this is made possible by exploiting the properties of the miracle molecules called DNA (De Oxy Ribose Nucleic Acid). Since the discovery of DNA, scientists have developed the solutions to overcome the problems in Agriculture, by modifying the genetic structure of the DNA.
The crops whose DNA has been modified are called “Transgenic Plants” or “Transgenic Crops”, and the products derived from these plants are called Genetically Modified plant products. So, how is this done? All the living beings, including animals, plants, bacteria, fungi and microorganisms have DNA, which guides their development and the pathway to their survival. This DNA in turn is divided in “genes”, which are specific for each and every feature and function of a living organism. This means, if we modify the genes, we are actually modifying any particular ‘feature’ or ‘function’ of that organism or any part of that organism. The same principle is applied in Agricultural Biotechnology as well. If we are looking to enhance the color of the flowers produced by a plant, we can alter the genetic structure of gene which is responsible for that color. This procedure can be done using any plant part, another example would be increasing the sweetness of a fruit, in this case we modify the gene responsible for production of fructose. Fructose is a sugar which gives sweetness to fruits, in theory, if we change the gene to produce more fructose, and then the fruit will become sweeter.
