can anyone explain to me what biotech crops is and how it works?

Question

I am tring to find out how biotech crops works what are the pro's and con's of this type of growing

Answer 1

Cheers,
A biotech crop is foodstuff that has been developed using technology that alters the genetic material within the foodstuff. For example, a genetic variation resulting from the crossing of seeds or roots to develop something new, or the splicing of DNA to introduce new characteristics into a foodstuff. For example, the production of "round-up" ready wheat; this is a wheat that is not impacted by the spraying of Round-up, a chemical pesticide used to kill weeds that deplete the food reserves in the soil. The genetic mutation introduced in to the wheat allows it to survive the application of the pesticide while the weeds are destroyed. The idea being that the wheat will grow successfully and the weeds will not in the presence of that pesticide.

The pros are that the biotech crops will grow and thrive displaying the desired traits. The cons are that we don't know enough about the multiple traits that genes carry, one change can influence many other unexpected traits in a foodstuff and result in unintended changes which may be good, bad or both.

Another con is that these biotech engineered foodstuffs may have other vulnerabilities and as the wild/natural forms of the crops dissappear or become extinct...there is a great risk that our food sources will be more at risk because they are all the same genetically (homogenous). Also, if there is the potential negative impact to health, although this has not been demonstrated in real life situations.

Answer 2

They are geneticlly modified food and are usually made bigger by changing some of the DNA and they can take that same DNA and copy it so make more crops,the downside is that it can be very tricky if you get one thing wrong then you could get sick if you eat the plant and since people will make the exact same plant with the copied DNA then there could be an epidemic.