Review of Lecture 20. Modern alchemy: Biotechnology.

1. Biotechnology: the altering of organisms to make them more suitable for use by humans.

2. Plant domestication: wheat (10,000 ybp in Middle East); corn (7,000 ybp in Northern Mexico); rice, tomato.

3. Problems with producing hybrid seed: time, expense, lack of male sterile strains, introduction of disease susceptability.

4. Genetic engineering of plants: insect, disease, and herbicide resistance; stress tolerance.

5. There are both positive and negative issues of plant genetic engineering.