Problems with the demand for food coupled with the need to protect untouched flora and fauna have been among several of the driving forces to produce enhanced food products. Enhanced meaning, plants are resistant to pest or in turn unaffected by insecticides or herbicides used before harvesting. It also means the food has more vitamins for us and the animals we feed. Enhanced food products, also mean more aesthetically pleasing plants or foods with a higher shelf life and or a longer tolerance for any physical or biological environmental stress. How do they accomplish this? Genetics. Genetically modifying food is one of the shortest ways in terms of time to improve food. To do this we have to modify the gene by adding or subtracting from a
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This includes the process introgressive hybridization, induced mutation and somatic hybridization (stated in Larson, E. L. 2014). Introgressive hybridization is the use of breeding a hybrid with a parent gene over and over again. This has been successful in foods such as corn where farmers tried to get the best crop for livestock feed or the sweetest flavor for human consumption. Induced mutations, another form of traditional agriculture, used in plants such as sugarcane to increase sugar yields and oil content in oilseeds by irradiating the plant with chemical mutations. Chemicals are sprayed on the plant to create a type of mutation. And somatic hybridization which is the infusion of protoplast cells with another protoplast of other genomes and harvesting the resulting hybrid Larson, E. L. (2014). One such example is the infusion of a tomato and a potato to create a pomato which has been successful for farmers in Kenya in their hopes to save space. All of these techniques despite the manipulation of genes have been approved by the public at large. The traditional techniques are only different to cisgenics in that cisgenics reduces the number of genes that are not wanted by eliminating or just not carrying them over and therefore, the length of time it takes for a reliable final product is cut short. Both traditional and cisgenic forms of cultivating have no effect on the wildlife. Any plant that could sexually reproduce with a cisgenic plant already has the same genes, and the join poses no threat to the ecology of the wildlife’s
This includes the process introgressive hybridization, induced mutation and somatic hybridization (stated in Larson, E. L. 2014). Introgressive hybridization is the use of breeding a hybrid with a parent gene over and over again. This has been successful in foods such as corn where farmers tried to get the best crop for livestock feed or the sweetest flavor for human consumption. Induced mutations, another form of traditional agriculture, used in plants such as sugarcane to increase sugar yields and oil content in oilseeds by irradiating the plant with chemical mutations. Chemicals are sprayed on the plant to create a type of mutation. And somatic hybridization which is the infusion of protoplast cells with another protoplast of other genomes and harvesting the resulting hybrid Larson, E. L. (2014). One such example is the infusion of a tomato and a potato to create a pomato which has been successful for farmers in Kenya in their hopes to save space. All of these techniques despite the manipulation of genes have been approved by the public at large. The traditional techniques are only different to cisgenics in that cisgenics reduces the number of genes that are not wanted by eliminating or just not carrying them over and therefore, the length of time it takes for a reliable final product is cut short. Both traditional and cisgenic forms of cultivating have no effect on the wildlife. Any plant that could sexually reproduce with a cisgenic plant already has the same genes, and the join poses no threat to the ecology of the wildlife’s