Known as “the application of scientific and engineering principles to the processing of materials by biological agents”, biotechnology could also be defined more simply as “using biological processes to make useful products”.
In fact, biotechnology is far from new. It existed thousands years ago when the ancient Egyptians were using living organisms such as yeasts to make bread and cheese. Our ancestors have always been looking for ways to produce more food or new foods. Plant breeders, for example, crossed plants to produce varieties with specified characteristics such as a particular petal colour or better resistance against a virus.
The difference with modern biotechnology is that today’s scientists can precisely identify the one particular gene that governs the desired trait. They will then extract this gene from one organism, copy it and insert this copy into another organism, which will transfer it to its offspring. Although the subject of controversial debate, modern biotechnology has applications in a wide number of fields: healthcare (medicines, vaccines, diagnostics, gene therapy); food and agriculture (genetically modified products such as tomatoes that produce fruit early for places that have a short summer, or wheat that resists diseases like rust); environmental clean up (herbicide and pest resistant plants); and so on.
And this is only a beginning. Research currently under way will greatly increase the numbers and uses of the products of biotechnology. For example, researchers are developing foods with improved nutritional qualities, plants that can resist drought and animals with higher quality meat.
Biotechnology can also play a part in the complex issue of world hunger. Over the long term, the use of genetically modified plants will enable harvest/crop losses to be reduced and harvest yields to be secured and increased. It will also be possible to produce plants with better nutritional value (such as rice varieties with enhanced contents of vitamin A) or fruit that delivers vaccines for diseases that devastate Third World populations.