Changes in Agricultural Management Due to Biotechnology

1. Genetically Modified Crops (GM Crops): GM crops are developed by modifying the DNA of natural crops to introduce new traits. These varieties do not exist naturally and are created artificially to include useful characteristics.
2. Ability to Withstand Environmental Stress: Unlike natural crops, GM crops can survive in harsh conditions such as changing temperatures, droughts, and extreme climates, ensuring stable growth in adverse environments.
3. Reduction in Use of Harmful Chemicals: GM crops are resistant to pests, pathogens, and weedicides, reducing the need for pesticides and harmful chemicals in farming.
4. Improvement in Nutritive Value and Decrease in Crop Loss: GM crops offer higher nutritional value and reduce crop loss, resulting in better yield and healthier produce.

In this way, as seeds of better quality of crops are being produced, farmers all over the world are cultivating the GM crops on a large scale. The area under its cultivation is increasing day by day. High-yielding varieties of GM crops like banana, maize, rice, potato, soybean, tomato, cotton, apple, brinjal, papaya, beet, rose, tobacco, wheat, etc., are available.

Examples of pest-resistant GM crops:

• Maize: MON 810, MON 863
• Potato: Amflora
• Rice: Golden Rice
• Soybean: Vistive Gold
• Tomato: Vaishali
• Cotton: BT cotton

In this way, a ‘green revolution’ is being achieved through tissue culture, and a country like India, with a huge population, is meeting with success in producing sufficient food grains for all.