Articles
BIOTECHNOLOGY AND PLANT BREEDING
In the early 1980’s some people predicted that in four to five years the products of biotechnology would appear as new and improved cultivars and that plant breeding would be replaced and become obsolete.
Despite its failure yet to produce a significant impact on crop improvement, some of the methods referred to collectively as plant biotechnology now are being used to investigate complex biological problems and to facilitate production of promising new products that would have been difficult or nearly impossible to achieve using classical transmission genetics and traditional breeding methods.
With the emergence of biotechnology, arguments arose among plant breeders and biotechnologists over issues only marginally related to science and crop improvement.
Too often scientists and administrators lost sight of the fact that effective and efficient solutions to scientific questions and practical problems are the critical issues, and that the best methods and technology should be chosen to fit the problems rather than vice versa.
There are three major areas of research and debate related to the use of technology, including biotechnology, relevant to plant breeding: 1) technical issues regarding the methods, plant materials, techniques etc., 2) social and ethical issues related to public acceptance of products, and to testing and release of altered biological products, and 3) the use of biotechnology in the integrative discipline of plant breeding.
The first two areas are being considered extensively, while the latter, which is the subject of this paper, has received much less attention despite its importance to the overall success of using biotechnology for crop improvement.