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Genome editing technologies and their applications in crop improvement

Plant Biotechnology Reports volume 12, pages 57–68 (2018)Cite this article

Abstract

Crop improvement is very essential to meet the increasing global food demands and enhance food nutrition. Conventional crop-breeding methods have certain limitations such as taking lot of time and resources, and causing biosafety concerns. These limitations could be overcome by the recently emerged-genome editing technologies that can precisely modify DNA sequences at the genomic level using sequence-specific nucleases (SSNs). Among the artificially engineered SSNs, the CRISPR/Cas9 is the most recently developed targeted genome modification system and seems to be more efficient, inexpensive, easy, user-friendly and rapidly adopted genome-editing tool. Large-scale genome editing has not only improved the yield and quality but also has enhanced the disease resistance ability in several model and other major crops. Increasing case studies suggest that genome editing is an efficient, precise and powerful technology that can accelerate basic and applied research towards crop improvement. In this review, we briefly overviewed the structure and mechanism of genome editing tools and then emphatically reviewed the advances in the application of genome editing tools for crop improvement, including the most recent case studies with CRISPR/Cpf1 and base-editing technologies. We have also discussed the future prospects towards the improvement of agronomic traits in crops.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by grants from the China Priority Program-Breeding of Seven Major Crops (2017YFD01100100), the Innovation Program of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (to K. Zhao) and the Talented Young Scientist Program of China (to R. Mishra).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Key Facility for Crop Gene Resources and Genetic Improvement (NFCRI), Institute of Crop Science, Chinese Academy of Agriculture Sciences (CAAS), Beijing, 100081, China

    Rukmini Mishra & Kaijun Zhao

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  1. Rukmini Mishra
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  2. Kaijun Zhao
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Correspondence to Kaijun Zhao.

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Mishra, R., Zhao, K. Genome editing technologies and their applications in crop improvement. Plant Biotechnol Rep 12, 57–68 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11816-018-0472-0

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Keywords

  • Crop improvement
  • Genome editing
  • ZFN
  • TALENs
  • CRISPR/Cas9