ABSTRACT

In 2008, over 10 million farmers in 25 countries planted transgenic plants, the planted areas increasing from around 44 million hectares in 2000, to 125 million hectares in 2008 (Marshall 2009). The majority of these crops are herbicideresistant (58.6%), the rest are either insect-resistant or have stacked traits. Although there is still much debate on the ethics of environmental safety, economics, and gene diversity-related issues, transgenic crops are still considered by many as a source of oral vaccines, biofuels, or improved/ high-quality food products; hence genetic engineering is either used to create new products in plants or else to assign to plants novel functions, for example, to improve crop quality or quantity.