Abstract:

The term biotechnology was coined by the Hungarian engineer —Karl Ereky in 1919. According to Karl Ereky, biotechnology referred to all lines of work by which products are produced from raw materials with the aid of living organisms (Verma et al., 2011). Applications of biotechnology are potentially unlimited. It encompasses basic knowledge from different disciplines like Biochemistry, Genetics, Chemistry, Microbiology, Engineering and Computer Science for biological agents (Almeida et at., 2011). Biotechnology was defined in the international Convention on Biological Diversity as "any technological application that uses biological systems, living organisms, or derivatives thereof, to make or modify products or processes for specific use." It plays an important role in human health for designing new medicines and diagnostic tools. In agriculture, it's applied in tissue culture, marker assisted breeding and genetic engineering, in industry for massive production of food products, drugs and chemicals as well as waste degradation. However biotechnology has presented a number of opportunities and challenges which will be addressed here.