Question

There is a common perception, also among biologists/ecologists, that plant breeding has been carried out by and benefited mostly large pesticide/seed companies like such as Monsanto. Provide in three sentences key arguments that could be used to efficiently counteract such a generalized statement

Answer 1

1. Production very high yielding plant varieties for producing more food more efficiently with less amount of chemical fertilizer uses and reduced tillage systems

2. Production of nutritiously improved food from less productive land (saline/acidic/alkaline soils) by using stress tolerant, herbicide resistant and disease resistant plants

3.It is because of these companies, large scale commercial monocultures become possible with less or no use of pesticides thus protecting or preventing environment environment pollution

Additional points

4. Biotetechnology is widely used for biofuel production which is the fuel of future. Biofules are environment friendly and are important in fighting the global warming problem

5. Production of more amount of food means more food available to poor people. Thus modern techniques used by such companies are inevitable in fighting the world hunger which traditional breeding methodologies cannot acquire