Biotechnologists refer to Agrobacterium tumifaciens as a natural genetic engineer of plants. Give reasons to support the statement.

Agrobacterium tumifaciens is referred to as a natural genetic engineer of plants as it is a pathogen of various dicot plants thereby has the tendency to enter a plant cell and deliver a piece of DNA called T-DNA to the plant cell and converts normal cell into a tumor cell. Now-a-days the Ti( tumor inducing) plasmid of Agrobacterium tumifaciens is removed thus abolishing its pathogenic nature, but the mechanism of transfer of required DNA fragment to plant cell still remains functioning and is used to transfer genes of our interest into the plant.