Assertion : Biotechnology deals with techniques that use live organisms or enzymes from organisms to produce products useful to humans.
Reason : Biotechnology uses only a unicellular organism.
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → A is true, but R is false.
Biotechnology is the use of living organisms, or enzymes taken from them, to make products and processes useful to humans. Old processes such as making curd, bread or wine use microbes. Modern biotechnology also uses genetically modified plants and animals.
Assertion (A): Biotechnology deals with techniques that use live organisms or enzymes from organisms to produce products useful to humans. — True. This is the book’s own definition of biotechnology.
Reason (R): Biotechnology uses only a unicellular organism. — False. Biotechnology uses many kinds of organisms, not only unicellular ones. Bacteria and yeast are unicellular, but Bt cotton and other GM crops are plants, and transgenic mice and cows are animals.
A is true and R is false, so Option (3) is the answer.
NCERT Extract:
Biotechnology: Principles and Processes – “Biotechnology deals with techniques of using live organisms or enzymes from organisms to produce products and processes useful to humans. In this sense, making curd, bread or wine, which are all microbe-mediated processes, could also be thought as a form of biotechnology. However, it is used in a restricted sense today, to refer to such of those processes which use genetically modified organisms to achieve the same on a larger scale.”