(i) IMPROVING

NUTRITIONAL QUALITY
Crop improvement is mainly aimed to increase the
yield , protein contents and improvement of
characters like baking quality of wheat and
malting quality of barley.
The four major types if seed proteins are
albumin, globulin , protamines, and glutelins . The
main storage proteins of rice is glutelin .
Nutritional improvement can bs achieved by
directed mutagenesis with the objective of
introducing more lysine codons into gene
sequences.

(i) SALT AND DROUGHT

TOLERANCE
Salinity is a problem in large area of India. Salt rich
soils have less productivity rate . The production of
selections with increased salt and drought
tolerance gas relied on obtaining variants arising
during cell cultures
SALT AND DROUGHT
TOLERANCE
(ii) PRODUCTION OF
PEST RESISTANT
PLANTS
Plant viruses cause serious losses of yield and
quality in most crops. These losses range from 5-
90% . Genetic engineering promises to have an
enormous impact on the improvement of crop
species. It has been suggested to develop new
genes for disease resistance .
> Bt cotton
Bt toxin is produced by a bacterium called Bacillus
thuringiensis (Bt for short). Bt toxin gene has been
cloned from the bacteria and been expressed in
plants to provide resistance to insects without the
need for insecticides; in effect created a bio-
pesticide. Examples are Bt cotton, Bt corn, rice,
tomato ,potato and soyabean etc.

Some strains of Bacillus thuringiensis produce

proteins that kill certain insects such as
lepidopterans , coleopterans, and dipterans . Bt
forms protein crystals during a particular phase of
their growth. These crystals contain a toxic
insecticidal protein. Actually, the Bt toxin exist as
inactive protoxins but once an insect ingest the
inactive toxin, it is converted into an active form of
toxin due to the alkaline pH of the gut which
solubilises the crystals. The activated toxin binds to
the surface of midgut epithelial cells and create
pores that cause cell swelling and lysis and
eventually cause death of the insect.

Cotton boll destroyed by bollworms & a fully mature

cotton boll

Specific Bt toxin genes were isolated from Bacillus

thuringiensis and incorporated into the several crop
plants such as cotton. The choice of genes depends
upon the crop and the targeted pest, as most Bt
toxins are insect-group specific.The toxin is coded by
a gene cryIAc named cry. There are a number of
them, for example, the proteins encoded by the
genes cryIAC and cryIIAb control the cotton
bollworms, that of cryIAb controls corn borer.