Underutilized biotechnologies?

The International Centre for Underutilized Crops (ICUC) has a position paper on the use of biotechnology to promote and develop neglected and underutilized species. You can download it here. The study concludes that some biotechnologies, eg tissue culture and microproagation, have proved effective in enhancing the use of neglected species, but that others, eg DNA fingerprinting for genetic diversity studies, have resulted in only limited practical benefits. The risks associated with applying biotechnologies include centralization, intellectual property protection and the formation of genetic bottlenecks.

One Reply to “Underutilized biotechnologies?”

  1. I know this is weird, but I am deeply suspicious of people who find benefits in “biotechnologies” only to discover that those biotechnologies are things like micropropagation and tissue culture, not the scary ones. Because say “biotechnology” to almost anyone, and tissue culture is not what they think of first, or even second. Those are never the biotechnologies people are concerned about. It would be nice if researchers would deliberately distinguish between molecular technologies and others, but I fear that battle was lost long ago, when beer and bread were cited as benefits of biotechnology.

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