Food Security in the Twenty-First Century 1 The Challenge: Improving Agriculture in Developing Countries 2 Agricultural Biotechnology 2 Approaches in Biotechnology to Improve Farming 3 Resistance to Abiotic Stresses 3 Resistance to Biotic Stresses 4 Approaches in Biotechnology to Improve Health 4 Examples of Biofortified Crops 4 Biofortified Rice 4 Biofortified Maize and Cassava 5 Additional He...

Oilseed crops are major sources of oils for human nutrition, and an increasing proportion is also being utilized for industrial purposes. Recent advances in our understanding of the basic biochemistry of seed oil biosynthesis, coupled with identification of genes for oilseed modification, have set the stage for the genetic engineering of oilseed crops that produce ‘designer’ plant seed oils tai...

Camelina sativa (L.) Crantz (camelina) is an oilseed producing plant in the family Brassicaceae (Cruciferae) originating from the Mediterranean to Central Asia [1]. Camelina meal (CM) is the by-product of camelina oil extraction and has a crude protein content similar to canola meal [2]. There is increasing interest in converting waste cooking oil and oil produced from oilseed crops, such as ca...

in order to evaluate the density and dry weight of weeds and seed and oil yield of castor bean ricinus communis l.) as a medicinal plant affected by cover crops, an experiment was conducted at the agricultural research station, faculty of agriculture, ferdowsi university of mashhad, during growing season of 2008-2009. treatments were four cover crops included white clover, fenugreek, hairy vetc...

The European Energy Crops Overview (EECO) project was carried out with 20 partners from fourteen EU countries during 1996. The EECO-project provides the state-of-the-art on energy crops activities in Europe. More than 30 potential energy crop species have been investigated in Europe, but only a few have achieved commercial status so far. The introduction of energy crops in agriculture is relati...

INTRODUCTION Microalgae comprise a vast group of photosynthetic, auto/heterotrophic organism which has an extraordinary potential for cultivation as energy crops. These microscopic algae use photosynthetic process similar to that of higher-developed plants. They are veritable miniature biochemical factories, capable of regulating carbon dioxide (CO ), just like terrestrial plants [1]. In additi...

Promising energy crops such as Jatropha curcas Linnaeus (JCL), which are planted on marginal lands, or microalgae such as Chlorella, which are cultivated in ponds located on mudflats or deserts, have been regarded with high hopes to solve the shortage of food crops and increase the amount of biodiesel (Fatty Acid Methyl Ester, FAME) production. However, the annual yields of biomass and transpor...

In a 1989 study, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) determined that organophosphate pesticides used in orchard dormant spraying were being deposited on non-target row crops grown at distances less than and greater than 0.4 km from the site of pesticide application. The residues found on non-targeted crops may have been the result of drift during pesticide application or tr...

Control analysis is a powerful method to quantify the regulation of metabolic pathways. We have applied it to lipid biosynthesis for the first time by using model tissue culture systems from the important oil crops, olive ( Olea europaea L.) and oil palm ( Elaeis guineensis Jacq.). By the use of top-down control analysis, fatty acid biosynthesis has been shown to exert more control than lipid a...

Renewable biofuels are needed to displace petroleum-derived transport fuels, which contribute to global warming and are of limited availability. Biodiesel and bioethanol are the two potential renewable fuels that have attracted the most attention. As demonstrated here, biodiesel and bioethanol produced from agricultural crops using existing methods cannot sustainably replace fossil-based transp...