The pause that defines Before we explore the transgenic revolution in agriculture, let's get some quickie background info.
Genetic engineering is the deliberate transfer of single genes between organisms.
In a sense, farmers began primitive genetic engineering at the dawn of agriculture, when they kept seeds from their best plants, gradually improving the quality of successive generations. That practice accelerated early in the 20th century, when scientific plant breeders started using the principles of genetics to make plants with disease resistance, better structure or appearance, and higher yields. Although plant breeders drastically increased crop yields, the technique takes many years, and it can only transfer genes between closely related organisms that breed with each other. Those limitations are meaningless to genetic engineers who can accomplish in a few generations what once took dozens. Genetic engineers can also move traits between humans, bacteria and plants as easily as between members of the same species.