Biotechnology definition and history

Biotechnology definition and history

 

 

 

Today biotechnogy is dominating field notonly in India but also all around the wold. According to European Federation of Biotechnology  “biotechnology as the integrated use of biochemistry, microbiology and chemical engineering to achieve the industrial application of microbes and tissue culture”.

History:
History of biotechnology is very old though at that time we do not aware about the name biotechnology. So I have listed few of historical points of biotechnology:

•As mentioned earlier, food biotechnology has been evolving for 10,000 years.

• Beginning in 2,500 B.C., Egyptians were breeding geese to make them bigger and better tasting when cooked.

• Microorganisms have been used to enhance food production since before the turn of the 20th century.

• Foundations for food biotechnology including pasteurization, modern crossbreeding and the science of genetics were all discovered in the 1800’s and early 1900’s.

• Food biotechnology as we know it today dates back to the 1970’s when researchers first began to explore improving food through genetic enhancements.

• In 1990 the first food products enhanced via biotechnology were introduced. These were an enzyme used in cheese production approved in the United States and a yeast used in baking approved in the United Kingdom.

• In 1994 the first whole food produced using modern biotechnology entered the U.S. marketplace. This was the FlavrSavr® tomato.

•An herbicide-tolerant variety of soybeans was introduced in 1997; this crop is currently the most cultivated biotechnology crop in the United States.

• In 1998, the Hawaiian papaya industry was revived from near devastation with a genetically-enhanced virus resistant strain.

• April 2002, the genome of the first food crop—the rice plant—was released. With the mapping of the world’s most widely used grain, scientists expect they can identify the genes responsible for disease and drought resistance in the rice plant and help protect this staple for the world’s growing population.