New traits introduced to crop plants by genetic engineering have the potential to increase crop yields, improve agricultural practices, or add nutritional quality to products. For example, transgenic crop plants capable of degrading weed killers allow farmers to spray weeds without affecting yield. Use of herbicide-tolerant crops may also allow farmers to move away from pre-emergent herbicides and reduce tillage, thereby decreasing soil erosion and water loss. Transgenic plants that express insecticidal tox
The new traits expressed in such transgenic plants are derived from a variety of other organisms. Scientists have given a gene from the bacterium Salmonella to cultivars of soybeans, corn, canola, and cotton to degrade the pesticide glyphosphate (Roundup TM). The gene for the insecticidal toxin in transgenic cotton, potato, and corn plants comes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). One of the genes allowing vitamin A production in golden rice is derived from the bacterium Erwinia uredovora ; o
The characteristics of all living organisms are determined by their genetic makeup and its interaction with the environment. The genetic makeup of an organism is its genome, which in all plants and animals is made of DNA. The genome contains genes, regions of DNA that usually carry the instructions for making proteins. It is these proteins that give the plant its characteristics. For example, the colour of flowers is determined by genes that carry the instructions for making proteins involved in producing t