Genetic Engineering For Crop Protection

Modern agricultural ecosystems, with their vast monocultures of genetically uniform crops, in many ways provide ideal conditions for adapted pests, weeds, and diseases. Despite widespread use of pesticides, global crop losses to pests, weeds, and diseases are still very high (weeds - 37%, insects - 29%, diseases - 22%, others- 12%). A global pest outbreak in one of the major staple food crops could have very serious implications for food security. Genetic Engineering (GE) approaches to crop breeding can greatly facilitate the introgression of novel resistance traits into elite crop cultivars which could provide a route to sustainable crop protection. Genetically Modified (GM) crops expressing the Bt protein are already widely used to control Lepidopteron pests, and herbicide-tolerant GM crops have greatly facilitated weed control. GM papaya that expresses a coat protein from the Papaya ringspot virus has saved Hawaiian papaya production which was close to being abandoned because of the disease. The information on biotechnological approaches for sustainable crop protection is very much scattered. There is no book at present which comprehensively and exclusively deals with the above aspects. The present book is divided into seven sections. The first section deals with agricultural applications of biotechnology. The second section deals with herbicide tolerance in general and herbicide tolerance in soybean, corn, cotton, alfalfa, canaola, sugar beet and coffee in particular. Insect resistance in general and Bt pest management in corn, cotton, potato, brinjal, soybean and rice in particular are dealt in section three. The fourth section deals with molecular diagnostics of plant diseases, disease resistance in general and disease resistance in papaya, plum, sweet potato, cassava, squash, potato, bean, sweet pepper and rice in particular. Nematode resistance in general and nematode resistance in tomato, tobacco, pineapple, potato soybean, sugar beet and cotton in particular have bean dealt in section five. The sixth section deals with combined resistance to herbicides, insect pests and diseases in potato and corn. The last section deals with contribution of biotechnology to IPM, issues in debate of agricultural biotechnology, future prospects and conclusions. This book can serve as a useful reference to policy makers, research and extension workers and students.