Recent advances in genetic manipulation of crops: A promising approach to address the global food and industrial applications

Abstract

Continuous increase in world’s population demands high food production, which has become a major challenge to the humanity. When there is sufficient amount of nutritious food to all the people there will be no problem of food scarcity. So, to increase the food production, many countries are adopting strategies of genetic engineering to enhance the crop yield. Recombinant DNA technology can be a viable source to develop genetically modified crops with enhanced resistance and improved yields to fight against malnutrition and food scarcity. With this technology, selected traits can be inserted into the plant genome, unlike traditional plant breeding, where many characters of two different crops will be combined which may lead to genetic modification at an extensive level. Present review focuses on the methods of plant transformation and outlines the scope of genetic transformation for improved crop production by transferring selected genes for biotic and abiotic stress tolerance. In addition, current study also provides information about various genetically modified crops produced worldwide and their commercialization towards various biotechnological products like GM livestock, GM microorganisms, vaccines and industrial products like bio-plastic produced from the transgenic plants.