Through genetic engineering many desired genes can be introduced into a plant. At the moment the main transgenic crops grown worldwide possess herbicide tolerance, applied in soybean, corn and cotton, which include 77% of all GM crops grown worldwide, followed by insect resistance (Bt- crops) in the second position with 15% of all GM crops.

Many more applications of transgenic plants are known. Some of them have been commercialised but some are still at the research stage. Other attributes include disease resistances (viruses), stress tolerance (heat and salt tolerance), increasing the nutritional value (golden rice with increased provitamin A), delayed ripening (tomato), male sterility or a modified colour.