Biotechnology and Biodiversity: Aspects of Improvement of Genetic Resources of Agriculture Crops

Abstract

World population has increased at a tremendous pace during the 20th centurywhen the fastest billion (the 6th billion) was added to the human population.Increase in population certainly requires extra land and water resources forurbanization, industrialization and agriculture. This extra pressure on land andwater resources is already placing the environment under threat. Therefore,the development of modern biotechnology has produced crops resistant toboth biotic and abiotic stress. On the other hand, products produced with thebiotechnological method show this method to be a proven, fast and steadymechanism for improvement and increase of genetic resources in agriculture.In vitro techniques of plant cell, tissue and organ cultures are no longernovel to us. Hence, we are in a good position to discuss the relevance of wideagricultural biodiversity, where the importance of sophisticated biotechnologyis strictly related to increasing and improving agricultural genetic resources.Thus, somatic embryogenesis, through anther culture in pepper, is an effectivemethod for obtaining the haploid and doublehaploid homozygote. This issue,with all the advantages and disadvantages of the method, is presented anddiscussed in details in this paper.