Ali, Q: Agricultural Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering

Biotechnology, or biotech for short, refers to the application of biological research techniques to develop products and processes using biological systems, living organisms, or derivatives of organisms. Biotech processes have been used for thousands of years, yet the industry we know today is scarcely more than a quarter century old. Bread, cheese and beer all products made from microorganisms have been part of the human diet for 6,000 years. But it was not until the 1970s that scientists began to apply components of these microorganisms at the molecular level to solve human problems in spheres ranging from medicine to agriculture and industry. Due to this breadth of applications, the term biotechnology gradually gave way to the more accurate biotechnologies or a collection of techniques that apply cellular and molecular characteristics and processes to solve human problems. Such techniques are applied at the molecular level and include genetic manipulation, gene transfer, DNA typing and cloning or microorganisms, plants and animals. Biotech products or biologics as they are sometimes called, thus originate from living organisms bacteria, cells or animals.