**5.1 Transgenic approaches in postharvest technology**

Transgenic or genetically modified crops (GMO) are defined as those species whose DNA has been modified using genetic engineering techniques. Gene of interest is usually identified and taken from another and gets artificially inserted into desired crop species in order to develop genetically modified crop or transgenic crops. The aim is to develop a plant with traits that does not occur naturally in another plant species. The gene of interest which gets inserted in referred as transgene and it may be part of either unrelated plant or completely different plant species. The purpose of developing genetically modified crops is to create desirable and productive product [24]. Transgenic approaches have been commercially used in many plant species like tomato, corn, tobacco, potato, soybean, canola, banana, alfalfa, rice, squash, melon, papaya. Statistics reveals that about 18 million farmers are cultivating GMO crops with total area of 181.5 million hectares in 28 countries in 2014 [25] which has increased to 185.1 million hectares in 2016 and to 191.7 million hectares in 2018 globally. Transgenic crops possess several traits like higher yield, improving shelf life of commodities, quality improvement, resistance to insect-pest, tolerance to abiotic stresses like cold, drought, heat etc. They also possess industrial and pharmaceutical importance (**Figure 6**).


#### **Figure 6.**

*Applications of transgenic in agriculture.*

Transgenic plants are usually developed through genetic engineering by altering genetic makeup, adding one or more beneficial genes or removing detrimental genes in plant genome. The detail method for developing transgenic is described as (**Figure 7**).
