ALLEN VAN DEYNZE, Biotechnology Specialist, Seed Biotechnology Center, University of California, Davis; KENT J. BRADFORD, Professor of Vegetable Crops and Director, Seed Biotechnology Center, UC Davis; and ALISON VAN EENENNAAM, Cooperative Extension Specialist, Department of Animal Science, UC Davis. Most crops developed through biotechnology that are on the market today provide farmers with in...

The ISU Crop Bioengineering Consortium (CBC) was organized to address the urgent, grand challenge to provide sufficient food, feed, biofuels and biorenewable chemicals for the world’s burgeoning population, through basic and applied research, to enable the bioengineering of valuable traits in a variety of crops. Importantly, the novel technologies employed can produce bioengineered crops that c...

The ongoing debate about the use of genetically-modified (GM) crops in agriculture has largely focused on food safety and genetic contamination issues. Given that the majority of GM crops have been produced to respond to the problem of crop yield reductions caused by diseases, insects and weeds, the paper argues that in those cases, the currently used GM crops are an unstable solution to the pr...

Population growth combined with increasingly limited resources of arable land and fresh water has resulted in a need for alternative protein sources. Macroalgae (seaweed) and microalgae are examples of under-exploited "crops". Algae do not compete with traditional food crops for space and resources. This review details the characteristics of commonly consumed algae, as well as their potential f...

Agricultural production and quality are adversely affected by various abiotic stresses worldwide and this will be exacerbated by the deterioration of global climate. To feed a growing world population, it is very urgent to breed stress-tolerant crops with higher yields and improved qualities against multiple environmental stresses. Since conventional breeding approaches had marginal success due...

During the past 30 years, medicinal and aromatic plants in the United States have moved from essentially unknown, minor agricultural plants into crops that many farmers consider producing as an alternative to usual plantings of food and feed crops. The attraction of medicinal and aromatic plants as worthy farm crops has grown due to the demand created by consumer interest in these plants for cu...

A wide gap exists between the rapid acceptance of genetically modified (GM) crops for cultivation by farmers in many countries and in the global markets for food and feed, and the often-limited acceptance by consumers. This review contrasts the advances of practical applications of agricultural biotechnology with the divergent paths-also affecting the development of virus resistant transgenic c...

To achieve food and energy security, sustainable bioenergy has become an important goal for many countries. The use of marginal lands to produce energy crops is one strategy for achieving this goal, but what is marginal land? Current definitions generally focus on a single criterion, primarily agroeconomic profitability. Herein, we present a framework that incorporates multiple criteria includi...

New crop varieties containing traits such as enhanced nutritional profiles, increased yield, and tolerance to drought are being developed. In some cases, these new traits are dependent on small RNAs or regulatory proteins such as transcription factors (TF) that modify the expression of endogenous plant genes. To date, the food and feed safety of genetically modified (GM) crops has been assessed...