| Traditional |
About 10 000 years BC |
Civilizations harvested from natural biological diversity, domesticated crops and animals, began to select plant materials for propagation and animals for breeding |
| About 3 000 years BC |
Beer brewing, che0ese making and wine fermentation |
| Conventional |
Late nineteenth century |
Identification of principles of inheritance by Gregor Mendel in 1865, laying the foundation for classical breeding methods |
| 1930s |
Development of commercial hybrid crops |
| 1940s to 1960s |
Use of mutagenesis, tissue culture, plant regeneration. Discovery of transformation and transduction. Discovery by Watson and Crick of the structure of DNA in 1953. Identification of genes that detach and move (transposons) |
| Modern |
1970s |
Advent of gene transfer through recombinant DNA techniques. Use of embryo rescue and protoplast fusion in plant breeding and artificial insemination in animal reproduction |
| 1980s |
Insulin as first commercial product from gene transfer. Tissue culture for mass propagation in plants and embryo transfer in animal production |
| 1990 |
Extensive genetic fingerprinting of a wide range of organisms. First field trials of genetically engineered plant varieties in 1990 followed by the first commercial release in 1992. Genetically engineered vaccines and hormones and cloning of animals |
| 2000s |
Bioinformatics, genomics, proteomics, metabolomics |
