BIOTECHNOLOGY INTELLIGENCE UNIT : PLANT BIOTECHNOLOGY AND PLANT GENETIC RESOURCES FOR SUSTAINABILITY AND PRODUCTIVITY
Global concerns about food, environment and health have been growing continuously since World War II. Global peace must be attained by providing security of resources and metaphysical happiness to all people living on this planet beyond governmental politics, nationalities, ethnic conflicts and social matters. As technologies develop, many conventional problems of food, environment and health have been alleviated. However, the continuous increase in the global population has been providing a screaming alert on global hunger into the middle of the next century. It is true that industrialization has contributed greatly to improving the standard of living, but it is also obvious that environmental issues have emerged from industrialization. Global agricultural production has increased four times in this century. This increase in production capacity has been achieved through the development of various technologies and by intensive applications of large quantities of agro-chemicals such as fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, etc. In other words, high input agriculture has resulted in high output of useful products and problematic residues. Agriculture with such a high investment of resources has resulted in environmental destruction, health concerns and a prominent increase in the difference between rich and poor. Present technologies and strategies which employ them are not sufficient to overcome irreversible environmental destruction. Economic and political goodwill efforts of governmental decision makers may partially solve the problem. On the other hand, implementing various strategies employing new technologies with available resources is the key factor to meeting global needs, as well as furthering the development of super-technologies and the exploitation of resources. Plant sciences are major subjects in food, environment and associated health issues; plant biotechnology and plant genetic resources have been utilized in innovative ways to alleviate various pitfalls. Research and development in plant sciences has advanced dramatically in the past three decades. Development of particular products has also progressed by application of plant tissue and cell culture techniques, such as micropropagation. Moreover, specific technologies and products have alleviated production constraints in agriculture by such means as biochemical and molecular diagnostics, plant hormones and biological pesticides, as well as improvement in conventional knowledge and techniques in agriculture. Exploitation of plant genetic resources provided the success of the Green Revolution in the 1960-70s. Further findings on various important traits and useful biochemical substances from plant genetic resources are expected to improve conventional crop breeding and non-conventional uses for crop breeding and pharmaceutical and food industries.
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