If plants like corn could be made to be apomictic, then farmers could essentially go back to growing their own seeds and not be so reliant on the hybrid corn seed industry. This would be true for other hybrids as well. High Yielding Perennial Crops. Research is underway in many labs, including my own, to understand the genetic basis of perenniality. Preliminary data suggest that it may be possible to engineer plants that are perennial yet high yielding, thus reducing the environmental and financial costs of agricultural production worldwide.
Transgenic crops are under development that resist pests and insects.
Many crops are amenable to transformation with DNA, meaning that you can engineer them to resist pests and insects through the addition of genes isolated from other naturally resistant plants or other organisms. Some of the genes from plant pathogens that interact with those plant R genes have also been isolated and studied. Through the concerted study of R and avr genes, and their interaction, we hope to be able to develop methods to sythesize new genes that will allow plants to resist pathogen and insect attack in the field without needing to resort to chemical control methods, thus reducing the energy and production costs, as well as reducing the pollution caused by chemical control methods. Nitrogen-fixing Crops and Microorganisms . Nitrogen is considered to be the most important of a plant's nutrients.