A review of the applications of CRISPR/Cas systems in crops and postharvest losses of agricultural produce

Abstract

CRISPR/Cas systems are the third-generation genome editing systems, which appeared in 2012 and quickly became a superstar in genome editing tools because of their great simplicity and usability compared to with ZFN and TALEN. CRISPR/Cas was originally identified as an effective acquired immune system in bacteria against virus infection and relies on RNA–DNA binding to achieve sequence specificity in genome editing. CRISPR/Cas9 system has become widely used in plants for characterizing gene function and crop improvement. Crops such as tomato, rice, banana and wheat are excellent model plants for biological research and are most important applied plants for genome editing. Genome editing has also been applied in plant breeding for improving fruit yield and quality, increasing stress resistance, accelerating the domestication of wild tomato, and recently customizing tomato cultivars for urban agriculture. In addition, genome editing is continuously innovating, and several new genome editing systems such as the recent prime editing, a breakthrough in precise genome editing, have recently been applied in plants. In this review, the advances in applications of CRISPR/Cas systems genome editing technology to enhance specific features in plants in order to mitigate postharvest losses and wastes are summarized.