Questions:Find and explain a definition of “traditional plant breeding”.Find and explain a definition of “genetically modified organism”.How do these two types of offspring creation differ in relation to carried traits? Frankenfoods?The Debate OverGenetically Modified CropsbyBill Rhodes, Department of Horticulture, Clemson UniversityMaha M. Alkhazindar, Biotechnology, Cairo UniversityNancy A. Schiller, University Libraries, University at Buffalo|||||||The weather fit the mood of the day-overcast and gloomy. Sam, a work study student in the plant genetics departmentat State University, glanced through the hole that had been cut in the side of the greenhouse and then went back tosweeping up the floor. The greenhouse had been broken into overnight. Outside the vandals had spray-painted "StopGenetic Mutilation!" on the walls of the greenhouse. Inside it was chaos. It looked like they had gone after the sprinklersystem with wrenches and hammers, and the test plots had been overturned and the plants trampled under foot.Sam watched Professor Bob Milikin, who normally didn't come to campus on Mondays, slowly enter the greenhouse,pale and tight-lipped, shaking his head as he stepped over the debris and surveyed the damage. There had been arecent rash of these attacks around the country, but mostly on the West Coast, and he had never imagined it mighthappen here. The irony was that in their case only fifteen percent of the uprooted plants were genetically engineered.The rest had been developed using traditional breeding techniques. The plants that had been genetically modified werepart of an experiment testing potential genetic engineering techniques for reducing the use of pesticides. He couldn'tunderstand it. "This was research to benefit the environment," he said out loud to no one in particular. "To find a wayto develop a plentiful, safe, healthy crop without using so many chemicals."It was no small problem. An estimated 100,000 chemicals-about 2.5 million tons-are in use worldwide. About 10percent of the 70,000 chemicals used in the United States are carcinogenic. In 1992, the World Health Organizationreported that three million pesticide poisonings occur each year, with 220,000 deaths. A study by the U.S. Depart-ment of Agriculture had shown that pesticide residues can persist on fruits and vegetables even after they have beenwashed, peeled, or cored. And there was strong evidence for associations between lymphomas and soft-tissue sarcomasand certain herbicides, and between lung cancer and exposure to organo-chlorine insecticides. Scientists believed thatpesticides could result in immune system dysfunction and might be linked to the increasing sterility in humans andother animals, particularly in males. A number of states in the U.S. had programs in place to reduce pesticide use by50 to 75 percent.Mina, one of the graduate students in Bob's research group, rose from the floor where she had been sifting throughsome of the uprooted plants. Her research had involved breeding native varieties of sorghum to increase their resis-tance to drought. "They don't really understand what we're doing here, do they?" she said as she caught Bob's eye."These plants had nothing to do with genetic engineering. But even if they did, isn't that what we're supposed to do ata research university? Try to learn whether something like transgenic plants are a good thing or not?"Mina had come from West Africa to study plant genetics at State University on a scholarship given to her by hercountry's government. For her country, as for many developing nations, genetic engineering held out the promiseof greater crop yields and the possibility of feeding millions of underfed and starving people. Studies conducted byJapanese researchers at Nagoya University and the National Institute of Agrobiological Resources had reported yieldincreases of 10 to 35 percent in transgenic rice in trials in China and Korea. Mina thought of the other benefits of genetically modified foods. They could be engineered to deliver more nutrients,reduce spoilage, curtail chemical contamination, even provide immunization against disease. She thought of theresearch underway to genetically introduce vaccines against diarrhea-causing bacteria into crops such as bananas.Although great progress had been made in inoculating children in much of the world, in the poorest nations relativelylittle had been achieved. That meant that about 20 percent of the world's infants were left vulnerable to horriblediseases according to the World Health Organization. Inoculating these children was almost impossible with the cur-rent technology. The vaccines available had to be injected, with the exception of the oral polio vaccine. Injections wereexpensive and problematic in much of the world. Vaccines need to be refrigerated from the point of manufacture tothe point of use and their delivery by needle usually required skilled medical personnel. The needles themselves werepotentially hazardous. Contaminated needles can often do more to spread a disease than contain it. But if childrencould be inoculated by simply eating a genetically modified banana, it would be possible for millions to be protectedfrom life-threatening diseases like dysentery in a relatively inexpensive and easy manner.But Mina knew there was growing opposition in this country to biotechnology-opposition that seemed to take itscue and many of its tactics from environmental activists in Europe and Britain. She had a friend, Erik, studying at theLondon School of Economics, who was vehemently opposed to corporate biotechnology. He and Mina usually steeredclear of the topic in the letters they wrote one another these days, but Mina knew what his views were. He had writtento Mina of the dangers of corporate mergers that concentrated plant breeding and genetics in the hands of a fewlarge multinational corporations. Erik was outraged that these companies plundered genes from developing countries,which they immediately patented and then held hostage, making the indigenous farmers of these countries buy backthe rights to grow their own seeds.These companies, he had written Mina, weren't interested in consumer safety or preserving the environment or bio-diversity except in the narrowest sense of how these might affect their profits or be profitable to them. In Europe, notonly did various consumer, environmental, and conservation groups oppose the growing of genetically modified cropson their soil but also their being imported from outside. Erik had appealed to Mina's sense of history, telling her thatshe of all people, whose country had been under the yoke of a European imperialist power, should not aid and abetthis new form of corporate imperialism.In his last letter to Mina, Erik hadn't written anything at all. He had simply included a clipping of a newspaperarticle announcing the successful sequencing of the genetic code of rice by two major agrobiotech companies. Thebreakthrough was being hailed as a "major achievement that could pave the way for improvements in a crop that isthe staple food for half the world's population." Erik had underlined those sections in the article that voiced concernsabout corporations gaining more and more control over agricultural research and the world's food supply. And he hadput an emphatic exclamation point next to the quote from a professor at an American university who was participatingin a publicly funded rice genome project who had said: "One thing people could argue is, how can a company ownthe most important food crop in the world?"Sam glanced at his watch. He had 10 minutes before his next class. He might have time to grab a coffee. As he walkedtoward the front of the greenhouse with the broom, he glanced over at Mina, who was still on her knees. He knew thata year's worth of her work had been destroyed and that she'd have to return to her country empty-handed. Sam felt badabout what had happened, but he had always believed that there was something not quite right about all of this-abouttampering with the genes of living things-plants, and animals. He thought of that monkey he had seen on the news-the one that had been genetically engineered with the DNA of a jellyfish. Now that, he thought, was really creepy.

Question

Questions:Find and explain a definition of “traditional plant breeding”.Find and explain a definition of “genetically modified organism”.How do these two types of offspring creation differ in relation to carried traits? Frankenfoods?The Debate OverGenetically Modified CropsbyBill Rhodes, Department of Horticulture, Clemson UniversityMaha M. Alkhazindar, Biotechnology, Cairo UniversityNancy A. Schiller, University Libraries, University at Buffalo|||||||The weather fit the mood of the day-overcast and gloomy. Sam, a work study student in the plant genetics departmentat State University, glanced through the hole that had been cut in the side of the greenhouse and then went back tosweeping up the floor. The greenhouse had been broken into overnight. Outside the vandals had spray-painted &#34;StopGenetic Mutilation!&#34; on the walls of the greenhouse. Inside it was chaos. It looked like they had gone after the sprinklersystem with wrenches and hammers, and the test plots had been overturned and the plants trampled under foot.Sam watched Professor Bob Milikin, who normally didn't come to campus on Mondays, slowly enter the greenhouse,pale and tight-lipped, shaking his head as he stepped over the debris and surveyed the damage. There had been arecent rash of these attacks around the country, but mostly on the West Coast, and he had never imagined it mighthappen here. The irony was that in their case only fifteen percent of the uprooted plants were genetically engineered.The rest had been developed using traditional breeding techniques. The plants that had been genetically modified werepart of an experiment testing potential genetic engineering techniques for reducing the use of pesticides. He couldn'tunderstand it. &#34;This was research to benefit the environment,&#34; he said out loud to no one in particular. &#34;To find a wayto develop a plentiful, safe, healthy crop without using so many chemicals.&#34;It was no small problem. An estimated 100,000 chemicals-about 2.5 million tons-are in use worldwide. About 10percent of the 70,000 chemicals used in the United States are carcinogenic. In 1992, the World Health Organizationreported that three million pesticide poisonings occur each year, with 220,000 deaths. A study by the U.S. Depart-ment of Agriculture had shown that pesticide residues can persist on fruits and vegetables even after they have beenwashed, peeled, or cored. And there was strong evidence for associations between lymphomas and soft-tissue sarcomasand certain herbicides, and between lung cancer and exposure to organo-chlorine insecticides. Scientists believed thatpesticides could result in immune system dysfunction and might be linked to the increasing sterility in humans andother animals, particularly in males. A number of states in the U.S. had programs in place to reduce pesticide use by50 to 75 percent.Mina, one of the graduate students in Bob's research group, rose from the floor where she had been sifting throughsome of the uprooted plants. Her research had involved breeding native varieties of sorghum to increase their resis-tance to drought. &#34;They don't really understand what we're doing here, do they?&#34; she said as she caught Bob's eye.&#34;These plants had nothing to do with genetic engineering. But even if they did, isn't that what we're supposed to do ata research university? Try to learn whether something like transgenic plants are a good thing or not?&#34;Mina had come from West Africa to study plant genetics at State University on a scholarship given to her by hercountry's government. For her country, as for many developing nations, genetic engineering held out the promiseof greater crop yields and the possibility of feeding millions of underfed and starving people. Studies conducted byJapanese researchers at Nagoya University and the National Institute of Agrobiological Resources had reported yieldincreases of 10 to 35 percent in transgenic rice in trials in China and Korea. Mina thought of the other benefits of genetically modified foods. They could be engineered to deliver more nutrients,reduce spoilage, curtail chemical contamination, even provide immunization against disease. She thought of theresearch underway to genetically introduce vaccines against diarrhea-causing bacteria into crops such as bananas.Although great progress had been made in inoculating children in much of the world, in the poorest nations relativelylittle had been achieved. That meant that about 20 percent of the world's infants were left vulnerable to horriblediseases according to the World Health Organization. Inoculating these children was almost impossible with the cur-rent technology. The vaccines available had to be injected, with the exception of the oral polio vaccine. Injections wereexpensive and problematic in much of the world. Vaccines need to be refrigerated from the point of manufacture tothe point of use and their delivery by needle usually required skilled medical personnel. The needles themselves werepotentially hazardous. Contaminated needles can often do more to spread a disease than contain it. But if childrencould be inoculated by simply eating a genetically modified banana, it would be possible for millions to be protectedfrom life-threatening diseases like dysentery in a relatively inexpensive and easy manner.But Mina knew there was growing opposition in this country to biotechnology-opposition that seemed to take itscue and many of its tactics from environmental activists in Europe and Britain. She had a friend, Erik, studying at theLondon School of Economics, who was vehemently opposed to corporate biotechnology. He and Mina usually steeredclear of the topic in the letters they wrote one another these days, but Mina knew what his views were. He had writtento Mina of the dangers of corporate mergers that concentrated plant breeding and genetics in the hands of a fewlarge multinational corporations. Erik was outraged that these companies plundered genes from developing countries,which they immediately patented and then held hostage, making the indigenous farmers of these countries buy backthe rights to grow their own seeds.These companies, he had written Mina, weren't interested in consumer safety or preserving the environment or bio-diversity except in the narrowest sense of how these might affect their profits or be profitable to them. In Europe, notonly did various consumer, environmental, and conservation groups oppose the growing of genetically modified cropson their soil but also their being imported from outside. Erik had appealed to Mina's sense of history, telling her thatshe of all people, whose country had been under the yoke of a European imperialist power, should not aid and abetthis new form of corporate imperialism.In his last letter to Mina, Erik hadn't written anything at all. He had simply included a clipping of a newspaperarticle announcing the successful sequencing of the genetic code of rice by two major agrobiotech companies. Thebreakthrough was being hailed as a &#34;major achievement that could pave the way for improvements in a crop that isthe staple food for half the world's population.&#34; Erik had underlined those sections in the article that voiced concernsabout corporations gaining more and more control over agricultural research and the world's food supply. And he hadput an emphatic exclamation point next to the quote from a professor at an American university who was participatingin a publicly funded rice genome project who had said: &#34;One thing people could argue is, how can a company ownthe most important food crop in the world?&#34;Sam glanced at his watch. He had 10 minutes before his next class. He might have time to grab a coffee. As he walkedtoward the front of the greenhouse with the broom, he glanced over at Mina, who was still on her knees. He knew thata year's worth of her work had been destroyed and that she'd have to return to her country empty-handed. Sam felt badabout what had happened, but he had always believed that there was something not quite right about all of this-abouttampering with the genes of living things-plants, and animals. He thought of that monkey he had seen on the news-the one that had been genetically engineered with the DNA of a jellyfish. Now that, he thought, was really creepy.

Accepted Answer

Plant breeding is a scientific process that aims to develop new and improved plant varieties with…

Find and explain a definition of “traditional plant breeding”. Find and explain a definition of “genetically modified organism”. How do these two types of offspring creation differ in relation to carried traits?