The Future Of Agricultural Biotechnology

USDA’a Advisory Committee has prepared a report titled ‘Opportunities and Challenges in Agricultural Biotechnology: The Decade Ahead’ which talks about the advancements made by agricultural biotechnology in the first decade and the future of it over the next ten years. As of now it is difficult to predict which modern biotechnology generated animals or plants we would be able to see in the market in the next ten years but some of the possibilities have been stated in the report and they have been mentioned below: (1) Genetically engineered plant varieties that provide improved human nutrition (e.g., soybeans enriched in omega-3 fatty acids) (2) Products designed for use in improved animal feeds (providing better nutritional balance by increasing the concentration of essential amino acids often deficient in some feed components, increased nutrient density, or more efficient utilization of nutrients such as phosphate that could provide environmental benefits) (3) Crops resistant to drought and other environmental stresses such as salinity (4) Crops resistant to pests and diseases (e.g., fusarium-resistant wheat; chestnut-blight resistant chestnut; plum pox resistance in stone fruit; various insect resistant crops) (5) Additional crops containing a number of transgenic traits incorporated in the same plant (stacked traits) (6) Crops engineered to produce pharmaceuticals, such as vaccines and antibodies (7) Crops engineered for particular industrial uses (e.g., crops having improved processing attributes such as increased starch content, producing useful enzymes that can be extracted for downstream industrial processes, or modified to have higher content of an energy-rich starting material such as oil for improved utilization as biofuel) (8) Transgenic animals for food, or for production of pharmaceuticals or industrial products (e.g., transgenic salmon engineered for increased growth rate to maturity, transgenic goats producing human serum factors in their milk, and pigs producing the enzyme phytase in their saliva for improved nutrient utilization and manure with reduced phosphorus content essays.