Agricultural biotechnology in the 21st century

Introduction: in recent years, agricultural biotechnology has made rapid development in the world, and a number of new crop varieties with insect resistance, disease resistance, herbicide resistance and high yield and quality have been successfully cultivated The industrialization of crop genetic engineering is speeding up with the strong participation of governments of all countries It is expected to become one of the important pillar industries in many countries at the beginning of this century, and will play a huge role in solving the problems of food security, environmental degradation, resource shortage, and benefit decline that human beings are facing at present Agricultural biotechnology has not only fundamentally changed the cultivation and cultivation of traditional crops, but also brought a new round of revolution to agricultural production So what about agricultural biotechnology in the 21st century? Development status of agricultural biotechnology: according to a report of international agricultural biotechnology application service agency, in 1999-2000, the planting area of genetically modified grains in the world reached 44.2 million hectares, an increase of 11% compared with 39.9 million hectares in the previous year According to the report, the United States has the largest planting area of genetically modified crops, accounting for 63% of the global planting area, followed by Argentina, accounting for 23%, Canada and China, accounting for 7% and 1%, respectively In 1999-2000, the planting area of transgenic soybean in Argentina reached 8.73 million hectares, accounting for 80% - 85% of the total soybean production in Argentina Experts believe that agriculture, environmental protection and marine biotechnology will become the second wave after medicine as the first wave of biotechnology, and the proportion of biotechnology products in the total agricultural output value will be increasing Clive James, the head of the international agricultural biotechnology application service, said that the expansion of the planting area of genetically modified crops in the world shows that producers in both developed and developing countries generally accept genetically modified grains Currently, 13 countries around the world allow the planting of genetically modified crops They are: the United States, Argentina, Canada, China, South Africa, Australia, Romania, Mexico, Bulgaria, Spain, Germany, France and Uruguay More than 500 kinds of transgenic plants have entered the field test, and significant breakthroughs have been made in the research and development of transgenic plants Transgenic technology is applied to introduce genes with special economic value into plants, so as to obtain new varieties of transgenic crops with high yield, high quality and disease and insect resistance At present, great breakthroughs have been made For example, biotechnology researchers have introduced Bt toxin gene of Bacillus thuringiensis into plants, and obtained new varieties of crops such as insect resistant cotton, corn, potato, etc., which have entered the large scale The field test shows a good prospect of application and popularization The introduction of gene into improved varieties can not only produce new varieties resistant to diseases and insect pests, but also produce varieties with high economic value The potential commercial value of transgenic plant breeding is very huge The annual output value of transgenic wheat alone is estimated to be billions of dollars The research of Agricultural Genetic Engineering in China started in the early 1980s In the mid-1980s, biotechnology began to be included in the national high-tech development plan, namely the "863" plan According to the statistics of China Society of agricultural biotechnology, 47 kinds of transgenic plants are being studied in China, involving 103 genes At present, six kinds of transgenic plants have been approved for commercial production in China, including the transgenic storage resistant tomato of Huazhong Agricultural University, the trans chalcone synthetase gene Petunia of Peking University, the antiviral sweet pepper and tomato, the insect resistant cotton of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the boll protecting cotton of American gaishandu company, which are commercialized in Hebei Province 。 Among them, the domestic insect resistant cotton has been promoted by 1.5 million mu The development trend of agricultural biotechnology in the 21st century The development prospect of agricultural biotechnology in the 21st century will be very broad, which will be favored by governments of all countries According to the statistics and forecasts of the international service for the acquisition ot agri biotechnology applications (ISAAA), the global sales of genetically modified crops in 1998 was 1.2-1.5 billion US dollars, reaching 3 billion US dollars in 2000, 8 billion US dollars in 2005 and 28 billion US dollars in 2010 From the current research progress and development trend, the focus of crop genetic engineering in the 21st century will be highlighted in the following aspects With the development of plant molecular biology and the updating of research methods, a new research field, genomics, emerged in the late 1980s Genome research is regarded as one of the most important scientific research projects in the 20th century It is worth noting that in 1998, the United States launched the corn based crop genome project, including cotton, soybean, sorghum and tomato The U.S Congress approved nearly $200 million (excluding investment from other channels) for the research, aiming to fully acquire functional new genes and possess intellectual property rights of new genes This fully shows that all countries attach importance to gene resources, and the smoke of "gene war" is spreading all over the world, and it is becoming more and more thick In the 21st century, the research of genome will change from "structural genome" to "functional genome" The research content of genomics is directly related to biotechnology, which has greatly promoted the biotechnology industry The biotechnology industry with "gene" as the core has formed and is developing rapidly Now, whoever first decodes the function of gene will have the intellectual property right of the gene, will be in the initiative position in the gene war, will occupy the dominant position in the market, and thus gain more profits The study of biological stress resistance turned to the study of abiotic stress resistance The abiotic adversity of crops includes drought, salinization, freezing, high temperature, poor nutrition, heavy metal stress, flood, ultraviolet, etc Crop genetic engineering has made considerable achievements in resistance to biological adversity (such as insect resistance) With the understanding of the mechanism of abiotic stress and the molecular mechanism of plant response to abiotic stress, it is possible for transgenic plants to gain resistance to abiotic stress by cloning genes related to abiotic stress signaling According to the prediction of experts, some transgenic crops will be commercialized in the early 21st century For example, transgenic maize with glutamate dehydrogenase gene can greatly improve the utilization rate of nitrogen fertilizer, its yield has increased by 10%, and the residue of nitrogen fertilizer on plant root surface has decreased by 50% The transgenic maize will be listed in the next 3-4 years The research focus of target traits will shift from "resistance" to "quality" The so-called quality improvement contents include: the extension of fruits and vegetables; the healthy vegetable oil (such as unsaturated fatty acids); the increase of nutritional value (such as vitamins); the soybean rich in anti-cancer protein; the high nutritional feed (such as high lysine, corn expressing phytic acid), etc In addition to the achievements in single gene transfer, some genetic engineering research may contribute to the improvement of crop potential yield in the future Yield is a quantitative character controlled by polygenes At present, scientists are looking for QTLs related to yield through molecular markers and other technologies, and it is possible to use these QTLs through breeding procedures At the same time, scientists are trying to improve some biochemical processes related to yield through molecular biological strategies to achieve the goal of increasing crop yield Using transgenic plants to produce rare proteins and other products Plant bioreactor will be another important field in the development of genetic engineering in the future It has become a hot spot and focus of people's attention to use plant to produce oral stock vaccine, industrial enzyme, fatty acid, pyrene and so on In addition, the plant can be used to produce the substrate polyhydroxybutyrate of bioplastics by genetic engineering, so as to avoid the so-called "white pollution" problem With the development of plant bioreactor research, the extension of the concept of agriculture has been greatly expanded, which has broken through the scope of traditional agriculture, extended to the field of industry and medicine, and reflected the development direction of modern science (author:) share to feed Weibo share to: