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Which major crops in the United States were widely genetically modified by 2014β15?
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biotechnology
Steps involved in the engineering of a recombinant DNA molecule.
By 2014β15, the major crops in the United States that were widely genetically modified were corn, cotton, and soybeans. During this period, approximately 90 percent of the acreage planted for each of these three crops in the United States utilized genetically modified (GM) seeds.1
These crops were primarily engineered for traits such as herbicide tolerance and insect resistance, the latter often achieved by incorporating a gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) to produce a natural insecticide. While other crops have been subject to genetic modification and field trials, these three commodities represented the most prevalent applications of genetically modified organisms in American agriculture at that time.21