Engineering drought tolerance in plants through CRISPR/Cas genome editing
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REVIEW ARTICLE
Engineering drought tolerance in plants through CRISPR/Cas genome editing Raj Kumar Joshi1 · Suhas Sutar Bharat2 · Rukmini Mishra3 Received: 16 May 2020 / Accepted: 11 August 2020 © King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology 2020
Abstract Drought stress is primarily responsible for heavy yield losses and productivity in major crops and possesses the greatest threat to the global food security. While conventional and molecular breeding approaches along with genetic engineering techniques have been instrumental in developing drought-tolerant crop varieties, these methods are cumbersome, time consuming and the genetically modified varieties are not widely accepted due to regulatory concerns. Plant breeders are now increasingly centring towards the recently available genome-editing tools for improvement of agriculturally important traits. The advent of multiple sequence-specific nucleases has facilitated precise gene modification towards development of novel climate ready crop variants. Amongst the available genome-editing platforms, the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat-Cas (CRISPR/Cas) system has emerged as a revolutionary tool for its simplicity, adaptability, flexibility and wide applicability. In this review, we focus on understanding the molecular mechanism of drought response in plants and the application of CRISPR/Cas genome-editing system towards improved tolerance to drought stress. Keywords Abiotic stress · Drought · Crispr/cas · Genome editing
Introduction Improvement of agriculturally important traits in crops to make them resistant to biotic and abiotic stresses has been an uninterrupted activity globally for a very long time. Adapting effective approaches and novel technologies is the need of the hour to sustain crop yield and minimize the effects of global warming and climate change. Of among the various environmental cues, drought is the main cause of agricultural loss globally, and represents a major threat to food security (Lobell and Gourdji 2012). It differs territorially, provisionally and in effects. Thus, plants have varied * Rukmini Mishra [email protected]; [email protected] 1
Department of Biotechnology, Rama Devi Women’s University, Vidya Vihar, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
2
National Key Facility for Crop Gene Resources and Genetic Improvement (NFCRI), Institute of Crop Science, Chinese Academy of Agriculture Sciences (CAAS), Beijing 100081, China
3
School of Applied Sciences, Centurion University of Technology and Management, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
response and have improved to display several structural and physiological performance and such behaviour comprise of various degrees of drought escape, avoidance and tolerance (Fahad et al. 2017). Traditional breeding and transgenic methods were successful to improve drought tolerance in crops including rice, wheat, maize and soybean (Ashraf 2010). However, most of these promising lines are not able to produce high yields in water-deficit conditions. It indicates tha
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