Agriculture

In agriculture, biotechnology is applied mainly through genetically modified (GM) crops, produced by gene manipulation to be pest-resistant, stress-tolerant, or otherwise more productive. Separately, tissue culture is used for micropropagation -- large-scale propagation of plants in a very short time -- and it is also the best method available for storing germplasm and maintaining a specific clone (genetic type). This matters particularly for plants that produce recalcitrant seeds, or highly variable seeds: recalcitrant seeds cannot tolerate having their moisture content reduced below a certain level, because freezing then cau …