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Today we will discuss how can biotechnology be applied to agriculture? We have knew What is biotechnology? but it’s general, We need apply to reality. begin with genes. Genes are the pieces of DNA code which regulate all biological processes in living organisms. The entire set of genetic information of an organism is present in every cell. The most significant breakthroughs in agricultural biotechnology are coming from research into the genetic mechanisms behind economically important characteristics and from genomics.

Genomics is the study of the complete structure of the genome. It provides information on gene structures and thus a basis for understanding protein structures. As a result, a theoretical model of an organism’s biology may be built from a listing of its genes.

Comparing the relative location of genes on the chromosomes and DNA sequences in different organisms will significantly reduce the time needed to identify and select potentially useful genes. For most types of crops, livestock, and diseases, certain species have been studied as model species because they can be used to understand related organisms. Knowledge of the genome of model species is accumulating rapidly.

Different plant species tend to have a genome structure with very similar gene content and gene order along the chromosomes. This similarity is called “synteny”. This means that the location of a gene which defines particular characteristics can easily be determined by comparing one genome to another. Therefore, it is not critical for our understanding to undertake the complete sequencing of plant genomes for all of crop plants with the great costs that this would entail.

Molecular markers are specific fragments of DNA that can be identified within the whole genome. The markers are found at specific locations of the genome. They are used to ‘flag’ the position of a particular gene or the inheritance of a particular characteristic. In a genetic cross, the characteristics of interest will usually stay linked with the molecular markers. Thus, individuals can be selected in which the molecular marker is present, since the marker indicates the presence of the desired characteristic.

Molecular markers can be used to select individual plants or animals carrying genes that affect economically important traits such as fruit yield, wood quality, disease resistance, milk and meat production, or body fat. Measuring such characteristics by conventional methods is much more difficult, time-consuming, or expensive, since it requires the organism to grow to maturity.

Plants can be obtained from small plant samples grown in test tubes. This is a more sophisticated form of the conventional planting of cuttings from existing plants. Another laboratory technique, in vitro selection, involves growing plant cells under adverse conditions to select resistant cells before growing the full plant.

In conventional breeding half of an individual’s genes come from each parent, whereas in genetic engineering one or several specially selected genes are added to the genetic material. Moreover, conventional plant breeding can only combine closely related plants.