Botany DNA: Gene work offers shortcuts in creating new plant varieties.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Designer plants created through genetic modification are grabbing headlines and scaring whole nations.

But to many researchers, inserting genes to alter the traits of plants is a new technique in a very old craft, one dating back millenniums. An Assyrian relief depicts the artificial pollination of date palms in 870 B.C.

The "classical" breeding approach takes two different plants and tries to capture favorable characteristics in the progeny. Scientists still do that, but use DNA linked to a trait, such as a wild cotton species from Central America that resists an insect, said Alan Pepper, a biologist at Texas A&M University's Crop Biotechnology Center.

The old way took multiple rounds of crossing to breed a cotton variety that carried the trait, produced quality fiber and could grow where it was needed.

Through genetic modification, the desired "trans-gene" with a pest-resistant trait is coaxed into the DNA of the host plant, a major shortcut.

Researchers have developed three basic ways to get the trans-gene accepted to create a new plant.

The most popular is the agrobacterium method, which uses a common soil bacteria _ dubbed "nature's genetic engineer."