ABSTRACT
Biotechnology is a broad discipline that studies the potential use of natural and modied organisms and systems in agriculture, medicine, environment and many other elds. It uses a wide range of techniques, from relatively simple breeding to highly sophisticated molecular and cellular manipulations to produce specic desired traits in plants, animals or microorganisms, often requiring extensive knowledge of the genetics of the target organisms. Agricultural and medicinal biotechnologies can use these tools for purposes as diverse as the genetic improvement of crops or farm animals to increase yields by enhancing growth efciency, functional genetic characterization and conservation of specic genetic resources (e.g., endangered species), animal and human vaccine development, and plant, animal and human disease diagnosis, among many others. Some of these technologies may also have applications in the food and agricultural industries, such as the use of molecular markers in the development of improved characteristics in crop plants, farm animals and poultry, for example. Plant tissue culture manipulation technologies, such as micropropagation, the culture of embryos, organs and meristem, anther/haploid cultures, ploidy manipulation and in vitro cell production and genetic engineering technologies including gene transformation, plant regeneration, transgenic plants, variant selection of genetically modied organisms (GMOs) and genetic improvement of plants are responsible for many recent breakthroughs in plant biotechnology. DNAbased diagnostics for the rapid, accurate identication of microorganisms in food, and pests and diseases of crop plants, livestock, poultry and even sh, as well as other agricultural or medicinal products have added to the contributions made to the society by biotechnology.
