Multiplex gene editing drives revolution in crop breeding: overlaid editing of multiple genes and customization of complex traits.
Lin J, Hazaisi H, Guan Y, Bai M
Crispr
Vegetables, grains, and fruits you eat could soon be bred to withstand droughts, produce more food, and taste better — all at the same time — without the lengthy timelines of traditional plant breeding.
For decades, plant breeders could only improve one characteristic of a crop at a time — like making wheat more drought-tolerant OR more nutritious, but rarely both at once. A gene-editing technique called CRISPR has changed that by letting scientists make precise changes to many genes simultaneously. This review summarizes a decade of progress using this approach to make crops better in multiple ways at once, from handling extreme weather to growing bigger harvests.
Key Findings
CRISPR-based multiplex genome editing can target multiple gene locations simultaneously, enabling pyramiding of several beneficial traits in a single breeding cycle.
Over the past decade, this technology has been successfully applied across multiple crop improvement categories including stress resistance, yield enhancement, and quality improvement.
Traditional single-trait breeding is no longer sufficient to meet modern agricultural and consumer demands, making multi-gene editing approaches an emerging priority in crop science.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists have reviewed how a powerful gene-editing tool called CRISPR can now edit multiple crop genes at once, enabling breeders to improve yield, quality, and stress resistance simultaneously rather than one trait at a time.
Abstract Preview
Modern agriculture currently demands higher standards for the simultaneous improvement of crop yield, quality and stress resistance. However, traditional crop breeding methods can no longer meet th...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
Was this useful?
Chloroplast Genome Editing Eliminates Gluten Immunogenicity in Triticum aestivum
It could mean that people with celiac disease — roughly 1 in 100 worldwide — may one day safely eat bread made from real wheat, without sacrificing the taste...