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Biotechnology in Agriculture Have you ever wondered what the ancient ancestors of crops used to look like?    The two most significant challenges facing the agricultural industry today are the loss of biodiversity and the loss of agricultural land. The loss of biodiversity reduces the number of different crops and livestock produced annually, and the loss of agricultural land makes it harder to grow enough food to feed the world's growing population. These problems are the effects of the increasing threat from climate change, soil erosion, and other concerning issues that farmers around the globe are confronting. Modern agriculture offers many possible solutions to these problems. However, the result is not always the same since every agricultural land is different in terms of its topography, soil, available technology, and crop yield. That is why agricultural biotechnology is being developed to address agricultural production and processing issues.      Biotechnology is a tool that uses living organisms (or parts of organisms) to make or modify a product, improve plants, trees, or animals, or develop microorganisms for specific uses. Biotechnology involves breeding plants to increase and stabilize yields; improve tolerance to pests, diseases, and abiotic conditions such as drought and cold; and increase the nutritional value and shelf life of crops. Biotechnology utilizes farming methods that go back to ancient times, like fermentation, and newer methods, like cross-breeding plants, to make them resistant to diseases.     There are some tools essential for agricultural biotechnology.  The first tool is conventional plant breeding, which entails sexual hybridization followed by careful selection. This process involves selecting superior plants and breeding them to create new and improved varieties of different crops.  The second tool is tissue culture and micropropagation. Plant cells, tissues, or organs may be grown by the process of tissue culture on specially prepared nutrient media. Given the appropriate circumstances, a whole plant can be regenerated from a single cell. On the other hand, micropropagation is a tissue culture method developed to produce disease-free, high-quality planting material and rapidly produce many uniform plants.  The third tool is molecular breeding, or marker-assisted selection (MAS). It makes developing new crop varieties easier and faster for scientists to select plants' traits and physical features.  The fourth tool is genetic engineering and genetically modified crops. Genetic engineering is a process that directly transfers one or just a few genes between closely or distantly related organisms.  Genetically modified crops are the output of genetic engineering, and they have been shown to contribute to crop development, significantly boost food quality, create a clean environment, provide livestock feed, and even provide pharmaceutical production.  The last tool is Molecular Diagnostic Tools, which are used in agriculture to make more precise diagnoses of diseases affecting crops and livestock.     Everything we eat has been geneyifally modified in some ways. Recent technological advances in biology have led to the development of innovative approaches that are increasingly used to address issues in agricultural production. These biotechnological advancements in agriculture play an essential role in enhancing people's living standards by providing us with essential means to cope with present and future concerns ranging from environmental changes to tackling food security and sustainability.