Gene editing offers a faster path to tougher, climate-ready crops
Khan T, Abro AA, Zulfiqar U, Alotaibi MS, Asadullaeva D
Crispr
The tomatoes and rice on your plate could soon come from plants engineered to survive the salty, drought-prone soils that climate change is spreading across nearly half the world's farmland by mid-century.
Think of CRISPR as a precise pair of molecular scissors that lets scientists snip out or tweak specific genes in crop plants. This review rounds up how researchers have used it to help rice, wheat, maize, tomato, and barley cope better with drought, salty soil, toxic metals in the ground, and pests, by editing the genes that control those weaknesses. It also looks at clever new ways to deliver the CRISPR tools into plant cells, since getting past a plant's tough cell wall has long been a major hurdle.
Key Findings
Salinity and drought already affect 20-50% of irrigated soils, with projections that nearly half of global farmland could become saline by mid-century.
CRISPR-Cas9 has been used to edit transcription factors (ART1, DRO1, OsDST) for drought/salinity tolerance, transporter genes (OsHMA2, OsNramp5) for heavy metal detoxification, and susceptibility genes (MLO, OsERF922, CsLOB1) for disease and pest resistance in rice, wheat, maize, tomato, and barley.
New nanobiotechnology delivery systems, including lipid nanoparticles, exosomes, and engineered nanocarriers, enable DNA-free editing by delivering CRISPR ribonucleoprotein complexes past the plant cell wall, a longstanding bottleneck in plant transformation.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists reviewed how the gene-editing tool CRISPR is being used to make crops like rice, wheat, and tomato more resistant to drought, salty soil, heavy metals, and diseases, while also outlining new delivery methods that could make this editing easier and more sustainable.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
CRISPR-enabled functional genomics for bolstering plant tolerance to abiotic and biotic stress; a comprehensive review.
Climate change intensifies abiotic stresses including salinity, drought, and extreme temperatures alongside biotic threats such as pathogens and insect pests, collectively undermining global crop p...
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