Biotechnology is the use of living organisms—microbes, plants, or animals—to provide useful new products or processes. In a broad sense, biotechnology continues a process that is thousands of years old. Using traditional plant breeding techniques, humans have altered the genetic composition of almost every crop by only planting seeds from plants with desired traits, or by controlling pollination. As a result, most commercial crops bear little resemblance to their early relatives. Current maize varieties are so changed from their wild progenitors that they cannot survive without continual human intervention.

The 1970s heralded recombinant DNA technology, which gave researchers the ability to cut and recombine DNA fragments from different sources to express new traits. Genes and traits previously unavailable through traditional breeding became available through DNA recombination.

Techniques

Modern plant genetic engineering involves transferring desired genes into the DNA of some plant cells and regenerating...