Gene editing gives rice a fighting chance against drought and disease
Verupanda S, Chakraborty A, Shrivastava M, Pati SK, Nandi D
Crispr
Rice feeds more than half the world's people, and the breeding advances reviewed here could mean steadier harvests even as summers grow hotter and storms more erratic.
Researchers have been using a tool called CRISPR to precisely tweak the genes in rice plants, like flipping specific switches to make the plant tougher. They can now help rice survive drought, salty soil, extreme heat, and fungal diseases without years of slow traditional breeding. Some approaches even work without leaving any foreign DNA in the plant, which eases regulatory and public-acceptance concerns.
Key Findings
CRISPR-Cas9, base editing, and prime editing have all been applied to rice to improve tolerance to abiotic stresses including drought, salinity, heat, and cold.
Biotic stress targets include major rice pathogens such as rice blast fungus, bacterial blight, sheath blight, and insect pests responsible for significant global yield losses.
Transgene-free editing via ribonucleoprotein (RNP) delivery and high-fidelity Cas variants are emerging as approaches that improve editing precision and reduce off-target effects.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists are using a precise gene-editing tool called CRISPR to make rice more resistant to droughts, heat, diseases, and pests. This review covers recent progress and points toward a faster path for breeding stress-tolerant rice varieties that could help stabilize food supplies as the climate shifts.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Harnessing CRISPR-Cas technology to enhance rice resilience under abiotic and biotic stress.
The CRISPR-Cas (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) genome-editing technology has become an effective and accurate tool for crop development, enabling targeted changes to gen...
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