Biotechnology uses advanced plant breeding techniques to introduce beneficial traits to the crops we grow for food and fiber.

Farmers and plant breeders have labored for centuries to improve the crops that produce our food. Traditional breeding methods include selecting and sowing the seeds from plants with beneficial characteristics, such as higher yield, better nutrition and resistance to disease. By breeding plants with these good characteristics, plant breeders combined the genetics of those plants, long before the science of genetics was understood.

The tools of biotechnology allow plant breeders to select genes that produce beneficial traits and move them from one plant to another. The process is far more precise and selective.

Biotechnology also removes the technical obstacles to moving genetic traits between plants and other organisms. This opens up a world of genetic traits to benefit food production. As an example, the Bt crops that are protected against insect damage contain a gene found in common soil bacteria, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). The gene contains information that the plant uses to produce a protein that is toxic to lepidopteran, or wormlike insects. When given that gene, the plant produces its own Bt protein that stops the insects from eating and destroying the plant. The Bt crops are less likely to require pesticide sprays by farmers to control insect damage.

Food biotechnology - benefits for your health and the environment.