XVI International Botanical Congess

The economic demand for improved methods of plant protection to increase crop yield was a consequence of the mixed results of the green revolution. This pressure led plant pathology, especially at land grant institutions, to play a key role in the development of agricultural biotechnology from the 1960s to the present. A host of plant tissue culture techniques and the most critical plant gene vectors were born of disease-resistance research. Humble spray and pray studies of pesticides and herbicides were transformed into sophisticated genetic engineering. Disease resistance genes would provide a model for genomic studies. Agricultural biotechnology became an economic mainstay of the entire biotechnology industry and today finds itself at the forefront of social and ethical debates on the new biology.