What are the advantages and disadvantages of biotechnology in improving crops?
Before I answer your question, I would like to define biotechnology as: technology based on biology, agriculture, food science, and medicine. (From Wiki) The major advantage has to be “having what people want at a low price”. For example, biotechnology was used to make crops that are more resistant to pests and weather fluctuations, while taking less time and effort to mature. Vegetables can be enriched with minerals or vitamins that would otherwise be obtained from eating other food. Less spoilt vegetable in the market. Cheaper vegetables and fruits. In other words, biotechnology’s biggest advantage is its inherent capacity to improve people’s lives. The disadvantages are more relevant in terms of side-effects that we do not know of, because applications of biotechnology are mostly less than twenty years old: we do not know what it does to us in the long run. We do not know what are the effects of eating biologically “enhanced” food. We do not know whether scorpion-derived plasmid vec
