(Ebook) What's new about crop plants : novel discoveries of the 21st century by U S Gupta ISBN 9781578086993, 157808699X

(Ebook) What's new about crop plants : novel discoveries of the 21st century by U S Gupta ISBN 9781578086993, 157808699X

Until recently breeding efforts centered on "high-yield-production" while sacrificing flavor, taste and other quality traits of the mass produced food crops. Now more emphasis is being put on the enhancement of nutritional and medicinal properties of the food crops. The use of genetic engineering has allowed for the integration of specific sequences into the host genome for the purposes of enhancement of nutritional and pharmaceutical characteristics of the food crops. Since protein synthesis, secretion and post-translational modifications are similar in plants and animal cells, and further, as no human pathogens are harbored in plants, food crops represent the safest production systems for pharmaceuticals and vaccine production. From being merely a source of food, crops are today being looked from a health benefit perspective and even from an environmental standpoint (for example as a source of biofuels). Read more... Content: Qualitative improvement of crop plants -- Rice (oryza sativa l.) -- Wheat (triticum aestivum l.) -- Barley (hordeum vulgare l.) -- Oat (avena sativa l.) -- Rye (cecale cereale l.) -- Maize (zea mays l.) -- Sorghum (sorghum bicolor (l.) moench) -- Potato (solanum tuberosum l.) -- Sweet potato (ipomoea batatas (l.) lam.) -- Cassava (manihot esculenta l.) -- Phaseolus beans -- Vigna species -- Broad bean (vicia faba l.) -- Chickpea (cicer arietinum l.) -- Tomato (solanum lycopersicum l.) -- Brassica vegetables -- Cucurbita vegetables -- Spinach (spinacia oleracea l.) -- Onion (allium cepa l.) -- Soybean (glycine max l.) -- Peanut (arachis hypogaea l.) -- Oil seed brassicas -- Sunflower (helianthus annuus l.) -- Sugarcane (saccharum spp.) -- Cotton (gossypium hirsutum l.) -- Tobacco (nicotiana tabacum l.). Abstract: Until recently breeding efforts centered on "high-yield-production" while sacrificing flavor, taste and other quality traits of the mass produced food crops. Now more emphasis is being put on the enhancement of nutritional and medicinal properties of the food crops. The use of genetic engineering has allowed for the integration of specific sequences into the host genome for the purposes of enhancement of nutritional and pharmaceutical characteristics of the food crops. Since protein synthesis, secretion and post-translational modifications are similar in plants and animal cells, and further, as no human pathogens are harbored in plants, food crops represent the safest production systems for pharmaceuticals and vaccine production. From being merely a source of food, crops are today being looked from a health benefit perspective and even from an environmental standpoint (for example as a source of biofuels)