Question 4: ‘Modern methods of breeding animals and plants can alleviate the global food shortage’. Comment on the statement and give suitable examples.
Answer:
With the increasing population of the world, enhancement of food production is a major necessity. Modern biological principles that has been applied to animal husbandry and plant breeding have a major role in our efforts to increase the production of food. These modern techniques include both the embryo transfer technology and tissue culture techniques.
MOET or Multiple Ovulation Embryo Transfer is a programme that has been successfully used for cattle, sheep, buffalo etc. that benefits in high milk yielding breeds of female are breed with high quality meat yielding bulls to increase herd size and it ensures good quality of progeny. It is also economic and time saving process to obtain the desirable progeny.
The procedure for MOET is as follows:
- A cow is administered hormones with FSH- like activity to induce follicular maturation and super ovulation.
- The cow produces 6-8 eggs instead of one egg produced normally.
- It is now, either mated with an elite bull or artificial insemination is carried out.
- When the fertilized eggs attain 8- 32 celled stage, they are non- surgically removed and transferred to a surrogate mother.
- The genetic mother can now be again super ovulated.
Modern methods in plant breeding involves following:
- Tissue culture is an in vitro technique of regeneration of a whole plant from any part of a plant (explant) by growing it on culture medium under aseptic conditions.
- Biofortification is the method for developing crops with higher levels of vitamins, minerals, proteins and healthier fats to improve public health.
- Single cell protein is an alternative protein source for animal and human nutrition from certain beneficial microorganisms like Spirulina.
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