Although the commercialization of transgenic,or "genetically modified", plants has stirred widespread controversy, and much research remains focused on improving techniques to create such plants. As people familiar with the controversy likely know,transgenic technology allows breeders to add genes for desirable traits to valuable breeding materials. However, transgenic plants are also widely used in basic scientific research. The ability to add a single gene to a plant allows researchers to explore what that gene does, or for instance.
Source: phys.org