Biotechnology and Crops The most of the current commercial applications of modern biotechnology in agriculture are on reducing the dependence of farmers on agrochemicals. There are, in fact, bacteria of the soil which develop a protein that has insecticidal qualities. A fermentation process traditionally has been utilized for the purpose of developing an insecticidal spray from this bacterium. This occurs in this form as an inactive protoxin, which must be digested by an insect in order to be effective. There are several toxins and each one is specific to certain targeted insects. Crop plants have now been engineered to contain and express the genes for the toxin, which they produce in its active form. When the susceptible insect ingests the transgenic crop containing the toxic protein, it stops feeding and soon thereafter dies as a result of the toxin binding to its stomach wall. Bacteria treated corn is now available commercially in numerous countries and is used to control the corn borer, which must otherwise be controlled by spraying, which is a much more difficult process. Crops have also been engineered genetically to allow them to acquire a tolerance to broad spectrum herbicides. The lack of herbicides that have this broad spectrum activity and no crop injury was a consistent limitation in crop weed management. Numerous applications of multiple herbicides were used routinely to control a very wide range of weed species and were determined to be bad for agronomic crops. Pre emergence was the only method of weed management. Rather than being sprayed on the actual weeds present, herbicide applications were sprayed in response to the expected weed infestations. Hand weeding and mechanical cultivation were quite often necessary to control weeds not controlled by herbicide applications. Herbicide tolerant crops which have been recently introduced have the potential of reducing the number of herbicide active ingredients used for weed management. This, in turn, effectively reduces the number of herbicide applications made during a season and there increases the crop yield due to less crop injury and improved weed management. Transgenic crops that express tolerance to bromoxyil, glufosinate, and glyphosate have been developed. Now these herbicides can be applied, by spraying, directly on crops without causing any damage to the crops while they kill nearby weeds. Herbicide tolerance was the dominant trait when commercially available transgenic crops were introduced followed by insect resistance. Herbicide tolerance was deployed on cotton, corn, and soybean crops which accounted for nearly 77% of the 626,000 square kilometers planted in transgenic crops; Bacteria crops accounted for nearly 15%, and stacked genes for insect resistance and herbicide tolerance used in both cotton and corn accounted for 8%.