By
Roger Hull, John Innes Center, Norwich, UK
G. Tzotzos, United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Austria
Graham Head, Monsanto LLC, St. Louis, MO, USA
Description
A transgenic organism is a plant, animal, bacterium, or other living organism that has had a foreign gene added to it by means of genetic
engineering. Transgenic plants can arise by natural movement of genes between species, by cross-pollination based hybridization between
different plant species (which is a common event in flowering plant evolution), or by laboratory manipulations by artificial insertion
of genes from another species. Methods used in traditional breeding that generate transgenic plants by non-recombinant methods are widely
familiar to professional plant scientists, and serve important roles in securing a sustainable future for agriculture by protecting crops
from pest and helping land and water to be used more efficiently.
There is worldwide interest in the biosafety issues related to transgenic
crops because of issues such as increased pesticide use, increased crop and weed resistance to pesticides, gene flow to related plant
species, negative effects on nontarget organisms, and reduced crop and ecosystem diversity. This book is intended to provide the basic
information for a wide range of people involved in the release of transgenic crops. These will include scientists and researchers in
the initial stage of developing transgenic products, industrialists, and decision makers. It will be of particular interest to plant
scientists taking up biotechnological approaches to agricultural improvement for developing nations.
Audience:
plant scientists studying genetically modified crops; agricultural engineers; agronomists; researchers; industrialists; lawyers; students; regulators
