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2.2.3.5 Genetic Engineering of Plants and Livestock to Improve Productivity

Despite the controversy over genetically modified crops in the 1990’s, as a result of advance in biotechnology, genetic engineering is still pursued to introduce new traits to crops and potentially livestock, whether these traits are naturally evolved in that species or are adopted from other species.  In the case of crops the goal is to improve productivity, adapt the crop to different environments, or decrease dependence on agrochemicals.  For livestock the focus is more on isolating successful traits from individual animals (e.g. growth rate, disease resistance) and introducing these into others (the ultimate approach being cloning).

Many of the delivery mechanisms discussed above and in the reports from the Medicine, Nanobio and Health technology sector are applied for these purposes and will not be described again here.

The genetic engineering of crop species has grown into a big business, in the 25 years since the first was produced.  In 2007, 671 field release permits for 54 different organisms were issued in the US alone, with an estimated 102 million hectares of genetically engineered crops planted worldwide in 2006[i].  Traditionally, novel DNA was introduced using an attenuated strain of bacteria, which infects a variety of crop species, or by a ‘gene-gun’ which shot particles of gold coated with the desired DNA into cells.  Recently however, mesoporous silica nanoparticles have been used.  These have the advantage over traditional mediated DNA transfer, in that they can deliver several different elements at the same time (e.g. different DNA sequences, or other chemicals or proteins which can promote the correct expression of the novel DNA)[ii].