Some of the Advantages of Genetically Modified Foods

The world population has topped 6 billion people and is predicted to double in the next 50years. Crop yields worldwide are significantly reduced by the action of pathogens, parasites and herbivorous insects. Moreover a lot of people in the world are suffering from malnutrition. In the developed world the nutritional content of food items is not of major concern, as individuals have access to a wide variety of foods that will meet all of their nutritional needs. Ensuring an adequate food supply for this booming population is going to be a major challenge in the years to come. Most genetically modified crops aregenetically engineered to include a gene construct from other plants, viruses or microbes.Generally modified (GM) foods promise to meet this need in a number of ways such as,pest and insect resistance, herbicide tolerance, disease resistance, cold tolerance.Moreover, GM technology offers a way to alleviate some of these problems by engineering plants to express additional products that can combat malnutrition. The preceding overview of nutritionally enhanced feed crops developed through genetic modification provided information on crops and traits that are under field trial or are already in the early commercialization stages. Nutritionally-enhanced genetically modified feeds have consistently shown efficacy in providing safe and available nutrients to poultry and livestock in various studies.

Keywords:

Genetically modified food , food production , nutritional content , GM food