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The Use of Genomics and Precise Breeding to Genetically Improve the Traits of Agriculturally Important Organisms

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Sustainable Agriculture

Abstract

Achieving food sufficiency for the increasing population is a global concern in contemporary times. According to the latest world summit on food security, it is important to increase food production by more than 70% by 2050 to meet the demands of the growing population. Besides population increase, extreme weather events like floods, droughts, untimely rains and pest outbreaks due to climate change negatively affect agricultural productivity. Moreover, expanding human settlements have led to the shrinkage of available farmland. Under this scenario, newly emerging technologies in crop breeding like gene editing provide a tremendous potential for sustainable agriculture and food security. Different gene-editing techniques, including zinc finger, TALEN and the widely used CRISPR/Cas system, are worthy to note. These techniques are used both in plant and animal systems to breed for desirable agronomic traits, leading to increased crop yields, reduced use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides and increased resistance of crops to climatic stress, with decreased post-harvest losses.

Furthermore, understanding genetic diversity with the help of genome sequencing technology has led to identifying agronomically important traits for breeding purposes. The key catalysts for the current genomic revolution are developing next-generation DNA sequencing technology that recently crossed a $1000 human genome barrier. This technology revolutionises crop production as quickly as it revolutionised medicine. This enables the sequencing of several crop genomes and facilitates the association of genomic variation and agronomic characteristics, laying the groundwork for genomic-assisted breeding. Thus, genomics and precision breeding could act as a game-changer in achieving food security by improving traits of agriculturally important organisms.

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Haq, A.U., Lone, M.L., Farooq, S., Parveen, S., Altaf, F., Tahir, I. (2022). The Use of Genomics and Precise Breeding to Genetically Improve the Traits of Agriculturally Important Organisms. In: Bandh, S.A. (eds) Sustainable Agriculture. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83066-3_10

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