Crop plants are incorporated with disease resistance gene to confer resistance toward these pathogenic diseases that are caused by pest, bacteria, and viruses this includes tolerance to herbicides. These include bacteria, viruses, herbivores, or native plants. Resistance to biotic or abiotic stressesīiotic stresses occur naturally as a result of stress exerted from other living organism within the same ecosystem. Besides being beneficial to the agriculture sector, the plants are found to be able to act as the factory for pharmaceutical protein production. The main purpose in the production of transgenic plants is to produce crops, which have ideal traits, quality, and high yield. Since then, with the rapid development in plant molecular biology and genetic engineering technology, a wide variety of transgenic plants with important agronomic traits such as pest resistance and drought tolerance have been developed, ranging from dicots to monocots that are amenable to genetic modifications. The first transgenic plant was developed through the insertion of nptIIbacterial antibiotic resistance gene into tobacco. A foreign gene inserted into a plant can be of a different species or even kingdom. Transgenic plants are plants that have had their genomes modified through genetic engineering techniques either by the addition of a foreign gene or removal of a certain detrimental gene. Hence, this chapter aimed to provide an overview of transgenic plants’ development, its advantages and disadvantages, as well as its application for the betterment of mankind. To develop a transgenic plant, parameters such as vector constructions, transformation methods, transgene integration, and inheritance of transgene need to be carefully considered to ensure the success of the transformation event. With recent advancements in the field of genetic engineering, it is now possible to insert beneficial genes from a completely different species or even kingdom into a target plant, yielding transgenic plants with multiple ideal traits. Moreover, traditional breeders will not be able to obtain traits which are not inherent within the gene pool of their target plants through classical breeding. However, traditional breeding technique lies in that only individuals of the same or closely related species can be crossbred. In the past, traditional plant breeders practice classical breeding techniques to propagate plants with desirable traits.
As such, crops which are the main food source must be produced at a higher pace in order to cater in tandem with the food demand. The human population has reached 7 billion by 2015 and is estimated to exceed 10 billion by the end of 2050.
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