Explain the difference between selective breeding and genetic engineering in the development of food crops with desirable traits.

Answer:

Both genetic engineering and selective breeding aim to develop crops with desirable traits, but with selective breeding only traits that are natively found in the genome of the species can be isolated and expressed. With genetic engineering the desired genes can be directly manipulated or inserted into the DNA of the organism, so the potential list of insertions is not limited to those natively found in the organism.