Biotechnology is providing us with a wide range of options for how we can use agricultural and commercial forestry lands. The cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops on millions of hectares of lands and their injection into our food chain is a huge global genetic experiment involving all living beings. Considering the fast pace of new advances in production of genetically modified crops,...

Agriculture is being challenged to provide food, and increasingly fuel, for an expanding global population. Producing bioenergy crops on marginal lands--farmland suboptimal for food crops--could help meet energy goals while minimizing competition with food production. However, the ecological costs and benefits of growing bioenergy feedstocks--primarily annual grain crops--on marginal lands have...

A wide gap exists between the rapid acceptance of genetically modified (GM) crops for cultivation by farmers in many countries and in the global markets for food and feed, and the often-limited acceptance by consumers. This review contrasts the advances of practical applications of agricultural biotechnology with the divergent paths-also affecting the development of virus resistant transgenic c...

Agriculture is now facing the 'perfect storm' of climate change, increasing costs of fertilizer and rising food demands from a larger and wealthier human population. These factors point to a global food deficit unless the efficiency and resilience of crop production is increased. The intensification of agriculture has focused on improving production under optimized conditions, with significant ...

Growth and heavy-metal uptake of various food crops and grass cultivated on harbour dredge spoils were studied, and health aspects in consuming the marketable products were discussed. Vegetables (potato, carrot, radish, endive, lettuce) and grass (English ryegrass) performed well on dredge spoils, but small grains (wheat, barley) were affected by manganese deficiency. As compared with crops gro...

Food losses in field and store 5 cause outstanding losses in many crops. Because there are few trained nematologists, many other important nematode problems on key food crops such as rice and paddy remain uninvestigated. Because nematodes are soil organisms, control is especially difficult. Few satisfactory nematicides are known and these are too expensive for most agricultural crops in Europe....

Conceptualising the ongoing conflict over GM versus non-GM crops in the frame of property rights one can see that economic valorisation dynamics and aspirations are working on both sides, within two differently evolving agri-food paradigms, with biotechnology companies propagating intellectual property rights on seeds and crops within a productivist strategy, and with retailer chains, NGOs, far...

Diversification of local food production can streamline supply chains, and ultimately increase security. Research often focuses on improving existing crops by selection agro-technology rather than searching for novel crops. Plants that are traditionally eaten interesting candidates adaptation to commercialised agriculture. In this research, two Malvaceae species were explored as potential crops...

Hectares of genetically modified (GM) crops have increased exponentially since 1996, when such crops began to be commercialized. GM biotechnology, together with conventional breeding, has become the main approach to improving agronomic traits of crops. However, people are concerned about the safety of GM crops, especially GM-derived food and feed. Many efforts have been made to evaluate the uni...

Through the use of the new tools of genetic engineering, genes can be introduced into the same plant or animal species or into plants or animals that are not sexually compatible-the latter is a distinction with classical breeding. This technology has led to the commercial production of genetically engineered (GE) crops on approximately 250 million acres worldwide. These crops generally are herb...