Biotechnology is an umbrella technology having many applications such transgenic plant reasearch to create disease resistant crops, increased nutritional quality of foods, genome analysis, understanding and curing genetic disorders, development of vaccines, biodiversity conservation among several other uses. 

The earliest use of biotechnology was selective breeding and hybridization of domesticated animals for better effeciency. It has been used to progress human civilizations and have become integral part of human society. From fermentation of beer, cheese curation, production of bread to modifying bananas and tomato for consumtion, the applications of biotechnology are all around us. In 21st century, the domain has come to encompass a wide variety of areas such as genetic engineering, tissue culture, DNA profiling, stem cell research, cloning, bionics among others.

The field of Biotechnology can be classified into the following terms which have come to be used in recent times :

• Red Biotechnology : This dimension of biotechnolgy is related to medicinal uses and includes areas of vaccine and new drug development, curing diseases through genetic engineering, new molecular diagnostic techniques, regenerative cell therapies etc. 

• White Biotechnology : It deals with industrial processes and pays special emphasis to sustainable processes and products by ensuring low energy consumption and less pollution. One of the key areas in this dimension is development of biofuels and biotextiles.

• Grey Biotechnology : This domain of biotechnology deals with applications of biotechnology for biodiversity maintainance and bioremediation (removal of pollutants) for oil spills and cleaning contanimated ground water among others. Using molecular biology, genome storage, cloning are used for preservation and maintainance of biodiversity. Microroganisms can also be modified to dispose of pollutants such as microplastics, heavy metals and carbon sequestration and create by-products from the processes for further use.

• Green and Yellow Biotechnology : This dimension of biotechnology deals with using plants and microorganisms for producing biopesticides, biofertilizers and creating genetically modified species for agricultural purposes. Yellow Biotechnolgy is specific to the cheesemaking, wine making and brewing.

• Blue Biotechnology: This brnach of biotechnology deals with exploitation of oceaninc resources for various applications such as medicine from horse shoe crab blood, new food sources such as algae and sustainable fisheries. 

• Dark Biotechnology : The term has come to be associated with use of biotechnology to create biological weapons and further bioterrorism. It involves ethical and legal questions surrounding the use of technology in a negative connotation.

• Golden Biotechnology : It is an interdisciplinary field with special focus on using computation and data for research and development of applications for a larger impact. The term is often associated with bioinformatics and computational biotechnology and plays a key role in pharmaceutical sector.