Engineering crops of the future: CRISPR approaches to develop climate-resilient and disease-resistant plants
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Engineering crops of the future: CRISPR approaches to develop climate-resilient and disease-resistant plants Syed Shan-e-Ali Zaidi1, Ahmed Mahas2, Hervé Vanderschuren1,3 and Magdy M. Mahfouz2* * Correspondence: magdy. [email protected] 2 Laboratory for Genome Engineering and Synthetic Biology, Division of Biological Sciences, 4700 King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Abstract To meet increasing global food demand, breeders and scientists aim to improve the yield and quality of major food crops. Plant diseases threaten food security and are expected to increase because of climate change. CRISPR genome-editing technology opens new opportunities to engineer disease resistance traits. With precise genome engineering and transgene-free applications, CRISPR is expected to resolve the major challenges to crop improvement. Here, we discuss the latest developments in CRISPR technologies for engineering resistance to viruses, bacteria, fungi, and pests. We conclude by highlighting current concerns and gaps in technology, as well as outstanding questions for future research.
Introduction Global population is growing at an alarming rate and is expected to increase by one quarter in the next 30 years, to reach 10 billion [1, 2]. Meanwhile, agricultural land area per capita, defined as the sum of arable land, permanent cropland, permanent meadows, and pastures, is declining every year [3]. Climate change is making the situation even more grim, with global temperatures expected to rise 2 °C by the year 2050. In Europe, for example, a recent study estimated that, as compared to the year 2000, summer and winter temperatures would increase by 3.5 °C and 4.7 °C, respectively, by that time [4]. This temperature shift will significantly affect the patterns of pathogen infection, making crop diseases more severe and less predictable [5]. Rising temperature is not the only threat to agriculture from climate change, as rising sea levels also exacerbate the scarcity of arable land; one such event has already caused massive locust swarms that severely damaged crops across East Africa, Asia, and the Middle East in 2020 [6]. With population increasing while agricultural land area decreases and crops experience constant threats from climate change, a vital route toward maintaining food security is the development of climate-resilient crops. To cope with these challenges, scientists and plant breeders have been consistently working to develop new crop varieties that are not only high yielding, but also resistant © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or ot
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