Biotechnology And Sustainable Development
Biotechnology And Sustainable Development
Ever since the advent of biotechnology in scientific arena, there has been a substantial progress in almost every walk of life notably medicine, agriculture, industry, environment etc., which even the critics of the technology cannot deny. The concept of sustainability demands that societal, economic and ecological parameters must be taken together for any technology to be viable and long lasting, particularly nowadays when world is witnessing depression on biotic and abiotic fronts. Biotechnologists all over the world have focused on this sustainability while devising their research strategies which particularly revolves around food security & nutrition, stress management and environmental protection. Biotechnology has not disappointed its proponents by contributing a lot on these constraints to achieve the objective of sustainability as is explained below:
A) Food security and nutrition: The problem of food security is exacerbated with every passing day and if not tackled adequately may surely going to threaten the survival of human beings especially the vulnerable and marginal sections of society. The problem is further compounded by increased urbanization, industrialization, shrinking land resources which mean that there is ever increased pressure on the declining land resources to feed the increased number of mouths in terms of quality and quantity. Biotechnology seems to be the only way forward as genetic potential of major food crops like rice, wheat, maize, potato and has already been attained through conventional methods of plant breeding and, therefore, any further yield enhancement demands either genetic manipulation of endogenous traits and/or transgression of genes across species to overcome the genetic barrier. Yield enhancement can be achieved by increasing the efficiency of photosynthetic apparatus and one way of dealing with that is to convert photo synthetically less efficient C3 plants like rice, wheat into more efficient C4 plants like maize, sugarcane by mobilizing C4 specific genes into C3 plants for increased fixation and conversion of CO2 into carbohydrates, and infact early experiments on rice have yielded encouraging results.
We should not look at food security only through the prism of yield enhancement, even if one can save the economic produce from biotic and abiotic stresses, that itself can sustain a lary chunk population. According to an estimate, only 63% of potential 1 yield available to humans and remainder is lost to weeds, pests and diseases almost equal proportions. That is where biotechnology has counted a by the development of genetically-modified crops that are resist to abiotic and biotic stresses be it the case of herbicide resistance, pest resistance stress tolerance, which minimizes yield loss considerably, beside providing double benefit to the grower.
Nowadays people are more interest in quality rather than the quantity of food. In that context, development of olden wherein there is vitamin A enrichment in otherwise deficient rice grains, is significant step in overcoming vitamin A related diseases and disorders especially in children of underdeveloped countries. Not only that biotechnologists have been able to produce a wide range of products in plants that directly or indirectly contribute in improving standard of human life/health which includes cyclodextrins, oligofructans, essential fatty like lino lenic acid and medically important proteins like antibodies and edible vaccines.
B) Stress management: Sustenance of our biosystem depends on how well we will be able to cope with the increased levels of stress which has already affected the productivity of our production systems significantly. It is also true that to feed ever increasing population, there is no other option than to expand area of cultivation to those environments which are otherwise harsh for normal plant growth and development like drought prone and salinity affected areas. Although every kind of stress do pose a particular problem and as such needs to be dealt with specifically like osmoprotection provides drought resistance and pumping of toxic ions into the vacuole is effective in salinity affected areas, but ultimately every kind of stress generates dangerous reactive oxygen species (ROS) like superoxide anion, hydrogen peroxide, hydroxyl radical and so on. These reactive oxygen species damage the bio molecules of the cell leading to collapse of the production systems. The ROS can be effectively dealt with either by increasing the production of antioxidants like {3-carotene, vitamin C, vitamin E etc. that react with ROS or by enhancing the expression of enzymes like superoxide dismutase, catalase, peroxidase etc. that remove ROS, and infact work on both these strategies is going on in full swing all over the world. The initial studies have yielded positive results and it would not be long before we will be able to overcome the remaining bottlenecks to achieve the idea of sustainability.
C) Environmental protection: Environmental preservation lies at the fore front of sustainable development and as such has been given top priority by the biotechnologists all over the world. The development of pest resistant and herbicide resistant crops have ensured considerable reduction in the usage of persistent pesticides and herbicides, as such, these production systems are not only economically viable but more importantly environmental friendly. It is an outstanding achievement that pesticides and herbicides once considered to be an integral part of our bio systems are now gradually phased out which was probably the primary reason for the wide spread adoption of these crops in the North America. The other notable example wherein environment is the primary beneficiary is the development of bio plastics through transgenic technology. All in all, we all should do our bit to preserve the environment and no sooner we realize that, better it would be if we really want to leave something for our future generations.