Question: How are you changing the DNA of the plants?

Beth Dyson answered on 21 Jun 2010:

To change the DNA of the plant, you can use two different ways!
1) You can breed different types of plant together. Plants of the same species can have different characteristics, for example red and white roses. You can breed these together and hope that the genes you want are passed from one to the other. In my research, I have one plant that responds well to sunlight, but doesn’t grow very fast, and another that is easily damaged by light, but grows quickly. By breeding these two together, I have got a plant that grows quite fast and is better at responding to light.
This is the main way that farmers have improved their crops over the past 30,000 years, and it works with animals too!

2) You can take genes from one organism, and transfer them directly into another plant. This involves putting the gene into a bacteria, which then infects the plant and transfers its DNA. The plant will then have the gene you want. I have produced a couple of plants using this method, which glow under fluorescent light when the gene is switched on, and one that expresses a gene involved in sugar transport from another plant. This is called genetic modification, or GM.

Genetic modification has a lot of benefits to the researcher as it lets you look at the effects of single genes on the whole plant. However, breeding is the preferred method of transferring genes from one organism to another, especially in this country. I’m using both at the moment as they both have advantages and disadvantages, but I am hoping to use breeding to change crop plants.