Environmental Science Chapter 10: Agriculture, Biotechnology, and the Future of Food (Blue Book)

Overnutrition

A condition of excessive food intake in which people receive more than their daily caloric needs.

Undernutrition

A condition of insufficient nutrition in which people receive less than 90% of their daily caloric needs.

Transgenes

A gene that has been extracted from the DNA of one organism and transferred to DNA of another organisms.

Feedlots

A huge barn or outdoor pen designed to deliver energy-rich food to animals living at extremely high densities.

Bacillus Thuringiensis (Bt)

A naturally occurring soil bacterium that produces a protein that kills many pests, including caterpillars and the larvae of some flies and beetles.

Seed Banks

A storehouse for samples of the world's crop diversity.

Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA)

A sytem in which consumers pay farmers in advance for a share in their yield, usually in the form of weekly deliveries of produce.

Sustainable Agriculture

Agriculture that does not deplete soil supplies faster than they are formed, or reduce the clean water and genetic diversity essential to long-term livestock and crop production.

Organic Agriculture

Agriculture that uses not synthetic fertilizers or pesticides but instead relies on biological approaches such as composting and biocontrol.

Norman Borlaug

American agricultural scientist who introduced specially bred crops to developing nations in the 20th century.

Food Security

An adequate, reliable, and available food supply to all people at all times.

Pesticides

An artificial chemical used to kill insects, plants, or fungi.

Green Revolution

An intensification of the industrialization of agriculture in the developing world in the latter half of the 20th century.

Pollination

An interaction in which one organism transfers pollen from one flower to the ova of another, fertilizing the female flower, which subsequently grows into a fruit.

Genetically Modified Organisms

An organism that has been genetically engineered using a technique called recombinant DNA technology.

Genetic Engineering

Any process scientists use to manipulate an organism's genetic material in the lab by adding, deleting, or changing segments of its DNA.

Biocontrol

Control of weeds and pests by organisms that prey or parasitism them.

Biological Control

Control of weeds and pests by organisms that prey or parasitism them.

Recombinant DNA

DNA that has been patched together from other DNA of multiple organisms in attempt to produce desirable traits in organisms lacking those traits.

Biofuels

Fuel produced from biomassed energy sources energy and used primarily to power automobiles.

Farmer's Markets

Markets at which local farmers and food producers sell fresh locally grown items.

Transgenic

Term describing organisms that contain DNA from other organisms.

Ethanol

The alcohol in beer, wine, and liquor, produced as a biofuel by fermenting biomass, generally from carbohydrate-rich crops such as corn.

Malnutrition

The condition of lacking nutrients the body needs, including a complete complement of vitanins and minerals.

Precautionary Principle

The idea that one should not undertake a new action intil ramifications of that action are well understood.

Biotechnology

The material application of biological science to create products derived form organisms.

Aquaculture

The raising of aquatic organisms for food in controlled environments.

Monocultures

The uniform planting of a single crop over a large area.

Integrated Pest Management

The use of multiple techniques in combination to achieve long-term suspension of pests, including biocontrol, use of pesticides, close monitoring of populations, habitat alteration, crop rotation, transgenic crops, alternative tillage methods, and mechanical pest removal.