Crops exposed to extreme conditions: perspectives of gene editing to improve stress tolerance.
Szabados L, Kant K, Rabilu S, Rashid A, Zsigmond L
Crispr
The tomatoes, wheat, and rice you grow or buy are increasingly battered by hotter summers and erratic rainfall — gene editing is now being field-tested to make those same crops resilient without decades of waiting for traditional breeding to catch up.
When plants face harsh conditions like drought or salty soil, they often struggle to grow and produce food. Scientists can now use precise gene-editing tools to tweak the plant's own DNA — similar to changes that occur naturally — to make crops tougher. This review found 97 real examples of edited crop plants with improved stress tolerance, including 20 programs already tested in actual fields.
Key Findings
A curated list of 73 Arabidopsis genes with confirmed roles in abiotic stress responses was assembled, providing a roadmap for crop improvement targets.
97 gene-edited crop mutants with tolerance to one or more abiotic stresses (drought, salinity, cold, heavy metals) have been documented across the literature.
20 gene editing field programs confirmed improved stress tolerance under real growing conditions, demonstrating practical agricultural feasibility beyond the laboratory.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists reviewed how gene editing tools like CRISPR can help crops survive drought, heat, salt, and heavy metals — stresses that are worsening with climate change. Unlike slow traditional breeding, gene editing can target multiple genes at once and produce changes indistinguishable from natural plant variation.
Abstract Preview
Extreme environmental conditions, such as drought, soil salinity, and extreme temperatures, seriously limit agricultural production. Traditional breeding can produce more tolerant cultivars, but ha...
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